The Greenshirts Are Coming

Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood. - Daniel Burnham

Everyone complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it. - Mark Twain

The Politico today is reporting that Nancy 'Navigator' Pelosi said:

“I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet,” she says impatiently when questioned. “I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy.”

Says the failed Speaker of the failed and least-popular Congress ever. Never before has such hubris and arrogance ever been coupled with such incompetence and inaction. But her hubris and arrogance has nothing on Andrew Simms.

We have just 100 months to act to prevent dangerous climate change, says Simms. This hysterical claim helps support a totalitarian leftist agenda called the Green New Deal that seeks to radically overhaul the economic sector of the UK:

Nothing short of the rapid and wide-scale re-engineering of the economy will be sufficient. Radical change, though, is needed anyway because of the credit and energy crises; the latter driven significantly by the imminent peak and decline of global oil production.

Rapid and wide-scale engineering of the economy, presided over by leftists, presumably, reminiscent of the absolutely disastrous Great Leap Forward promulgated by Mao Zedong. Simms claims that an effort on the scale of "how Britain prepared for, fought and recovered from the Second World War" is now necessary to prevent climate change. Word is still out on how Simms plans to command the tides.

Simms doesn't even pretend that this is just some environmental agenda. Not only the economic sphere, but the 'political and behavioural' spheres have to be completely remade to suit Simm's tastes. Remarkably, he goes on to say in a sort of 'while we're at it' vein, that a complete overhaul of financial institutions is necessary also, and that we have to 'rethink reality'.

Simms even goes on to propose cadres of Greenshirts: "Increasing our energy security and independence by making every building a power station and efficiency centre will create a "carbon army" of countless green collar workers."

This is wholly totalitarian - but that is the idea.

(h/t Tigerhawk)

Your Daily Triviality

Who is the baby of the house?

HuffPo Moron Blames Everyone But Shooter For Knoxville Killings

I am a lapsed Unitarian Universalist (is that even possible?) but I don't agree with this inane drivel:

You killed them, Pat Robertson. You killed them, Pastor Hagee. You killed them, Ann Coulter. You killed them, Dick Morris and Sean Hannity and the rest of you at Fox News.

The hatred of the right is horrible, so let's whip up some hatred against them!

Yeah, we need more of that.

Yet another of my many pet peeves about the left: blaming everyone but the perpetrator for evil.

Boycott These Fascist Olympics

For the first time since the 1936 Olympics in Berlin 1980 Olympics in Moscow [ed. thanks for the reminder, Likwidshoe], a non-democratic state is hosting the world's games. This is stunningly shameful, and I urge all readers of whatever political persuasion to turn your back on the rehabilition of the butchers of Tiananmen.

Instead, I recommend taking a look at this presentation by the Holocaust Memorial Museum which, probably not coincidentally, is featuring the Nazi Olympics of 1936.

Just a blurb here about the Holocaust Museum: why in the hell is the United States hosting a holocaust museum? The U.S. liberated death camps and didn't create them, so it always seemed inappropriate to host a museum in Washington D.C. that implies that America was somehow culpable for that slaughter. Having said that, the Holocaust Museum is easily the most interesting and best-designed museum I have ever been to, and this is coming from someone who is a museum hound. I highly recommend a visit.

The 'Prince Of Darkness' Has A Brain Tumor

I cringe to think what the leftwing blogs are saying about Robert Novak's brain tumor.

The article notes an incident involving Novak last week:

"Novak, 77, struck a pedestrian last Wednesday while driving his Chevrolet Corvette in Washington, D.C. The man he struck suffered minor injuries, according to the Associated Press. Novak was issued a $50 citation.

Asked whether the accident might have been linked to the columnist's medical condition, Novak's reporter, Charlie Spiering, said today, "It's really too early to tell."

Novak said he didn't realize what happened and continued driving until a bicyclist stopped him, the Associated Press reported. David Bono, the bicyclist, said the pedestrian was hit in a crosswalk and was splayed across Novak's windshield.

I hope he gets cured and has a complete recovery. My condolences to his family. See? I don't even like the guy that much, but saying that was easy and sincere.

Obama's Overseas Trip Lead Evaporates

Indeed.

Barack Obama's excellent adventure in Europe may have backfired:

"The Friday-Sunday poll, mostly conducted as Obama was returning from his much-publicized overseas trip and released just this hour, shows McCain now ahead 49%-45% among voters that Gallup believes are most likely to go to the polls in November. In late June, he was behind among likely voters, 50%-44%."

Gallup daily had shown Obama widening his lead over McCain during his European trip. However:

Obama gained ground over McCain in each of the last three tracking updates, but today's average shows no further gains and a slight drop of Obama's percent of the vote from 49% to 48% [to McCain's 40%].

This is among the less reliable 'registered voters' metric.

This is not an impressive peformance by Obama. He was lauded by a gushing press as the biggest thing since the Beatles, with every finely crafted photo-op possible, in a year when absolutely everyone is supposed to hate the Republicans. Obama has a huge campaign staff doing an effective job, he has more money than he knows what to do with, and McCain and his campaign are continuing to prove themselves inept.

Yet Obama can't close the deal. He should be very worried.

Iran Now Has 6,000 Centrifuges

Yeah, diplomacy, nuance and multilateral hand-wringing has just worked out so well, hasn't it:

"Islamic Iran today possesses 6,000 centrifuges," Fars news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying Saturday in an address to university professors in the northeastern city of Mashhad.

That is, 6,000 centrifuges operating at full-tilt in a custom undeground reinforced concrete facility at Natanz. Don't ask why a peaceful, civilian nuclear energy program needs to be housed underground in a bomb-proof bunker. An honest and thorough inspections regime would be more than enough to keep the Israelis from attacking.

As for you milquetoast liberals who think that talking just for talking's sake is a good thing in diplomacy, get this:

Ahmadinejad called the U.S. participation in the latest round of nuclear talks "a victory for Iran." In the past, the U.S. said it would join talks only if Iran suspends uranium enrichment first.

"The presence of a U.S. representative ... was a victory for Iran, irrespective of the outcome. ... The U.S. condition was for Iran to suspend enrichment but they attended (the talks) without such a condition being met," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying in the state radio report.

Mind you, Ahmadinejad is declaring victory here over the war mongering criminal Bush regime.

How much worse will this get when we have a president like Obama in office who is too frightened to talk to Fox News?

You Have Been WARNED

McCain Wanted Victory; Obama Wanted Anything But

Yesterday in Rochester, New Hampshire, McCain said:

This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.

It seems that way? Any honest appraisal demands it. Obama's profusion of views on Iraq are dizzying, but they have always had one unifying theme: victory is not an option. Obama opposed The Surge, he opposed troop funding, and he (initially) proposed a hard 16-month timeline for abandoning Iraq regardless of the facts on the ground there and regardless of what the generals recommend (even if genocide raged. No hope or change for you, Iraq). Obama's only sacred principle is that he wants to be president, and the only way this overweening ambition could be satisfied was to run to the left of Hillary Clinton in order to win the Democratic primaries. Thus his purely political Iraq 'strategy' was born.

So John McCain can be forgiven, and even congratulated, for pointing out that Obama's views have nothing to do with Iraq, and everything to do with Obama's presidential ambitions.

John McCain on the other hand very courageously proposed troop increases in Iraq at a time when abandoning Iraq to the wolves was seen as conventionally wise, and even desirable. McCain truly did risk all of his presidential ambitions on a single long shot, and had The Surge failed he would of course not be within striking distance of winning the presidency. To John McCain however, victory was more important than John McCain. That is quite refreshing.

Joe Klein reacted by fomenting a lot of faux outrage over McCain's statement, knowing that this uppercut to Obama's solar plexus may well be McCain's best soundbite of the campaign:

This is the ninth presidential campaign I've covered. I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency. How sad.

I wish the left could, just once, generate this type of ire for lightweight candidates who want to destroy America's military morale and ability to follow through on critical foreign policy projects.

Obama Doubles Down: Still Wouldn't Have Supported The Surge

It was quite a gaffe for Obama to say that he wouldn't have supported The Surge if he could go back and do it all over again. True to form however, he has turned this foreign policy gaffe into his foreign policy:

I am sure Obama did not expect any kind of pushback from her, which is undoubtedly why he agreed to an interview with Couric instead of, say, Sean Hannity. But even Katie Couric seems incredulous - it is not a good sign when one of your friendly twinkies doesn't even believe you.

Here is the problem with Obama's foreign policy worldview: he doesn't seem to believe that the U.S. can ever walk and chew gum at the same time. If we are fighting in Iraq, according to Obama, it must mean we are completely ignoring Afghanistan. And to hell with the Iraqi people and their struggle to build a democracy - spending all of those billions on some domestic stimulus package would have made America safer. Obama does not explain how this would be nor can he - it is simply ludicrous.

Obama also denies that Iraq is the central front on the War on Terror. Funny, but Osama bin Laden himself said the following:

"The most important and serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation. It is raging in the land of the two rivers. The world's millstone and pillar is in Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate."

The President, the generals, intelligence analysts and hell, even the enemy himself says Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. Not good enough! Foreign policy expert Barack Obama has spoken, and that is good enough for you, peasant.

(h/t Gateway Pundit)

P.S. In fact, notice how McCain has the cojones to interview with Couric. Okay okay so she is more poodle than pit bull . . . but when will Obama sit down with anyone who isn't a pre-approved leftist?

Senate Votes To Curb Oil Speculation

"We need legislation to rein in Wall Street traders who unfairly are driving up oil prices," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

There is so much buffoonery at work in this statement, it is hard to know where to begin in demolishing it. Only 'Wall Street traders' are driving up the price of oil? And they are doing so 'unfairly'?

Any effective legislative attempts to rein in oil speculators will do one thing and one thing only: drive the markets overseas. That might make the Democratic leadership feel good about themselves, but it will do scant little for anyone else.

Nevertheless, the Senate has voted 94-0 to curb oil speculation.

Good grief, not one senator opposed this?

You NDers will be glad to know that Byron Dorgan is a sponsor of this travesty.

Obama Flip-Flops On Progress In Iraq

First Obama said that, if he had it all to do over again, he would have voted against The Surge. You might think Obama said this because he doesn't think The Surge has led to progress in Iraq.

But wait . . . now that he is serving his tour of duty in Iraq he suddenly has glowing things to say about the success there:

. . . Mr. Obama said he was “pleased with the progress taking place” in Iraq and said that it was his impression that among Iraqis there was “more optimism about what is happening.”

“You see the activity taking place, the people in the shops, the traffic on the streets, clearly there’s been an enormous improvement,” he said.

Mind you, Obama was caught in a terrible bind here. His number one position throughout the primaries was that Iraq was an irredeemable and hopeless mess, and that he had the insight to see this disaster before it unfolded. Obama opposed the war from the beginning, didn't you know?

But the success of The Surge in Iraq is obvious and undeniable. He risks being ridiculed as the candidate who has eyes but will not see if he denies what everyone else knows: that the situation in Iraq has improved tremendously.

So he has now engaged in the Mother of all Flip Flops: he now agrees with the Bush administration, the neocons, General Betrayus and (ack!) Joe Lieberman that the U.S. has achieved a remarkable victory in Iraq. He has abandoned his adolescent worldview that nothing good can ever come from the Bush presidency.

Will the hardcore left ever forgive him?

Obama Expects To Be President For The 'Next Eight To Ten Years'?

Just . . . wow.

(h/t one of Ace's minions)

Maliki Denies Agreeing With Obama's Plans For Withdrawal

Josh Marshall is all a twitter over Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki practically endorsing Obama in the presidential election:

I've spent a couple hours now trying to process the probable impact of Prime Minister al Maliki's explicit endorsement of Barack Obama's 16 month timetable for withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. My first instinct is always to try not to overstate the impact of momentary developments. But I don't think it's enough to say this is a huge development. It's huger than that. In a stroke, I think, al Maliki has cut McCain off at the knees in a way I'm not sure his campaign strategy can recover from.

Poor Josh has been suckered, taken by wishful thinking into believing the implausible idea that Maliki is a 'surrender you can believe in' Democrat at heart. Once again Maliki's comments were misunderstood, mistranslated and not conveyed accurately by the MSM. How do we know this? Because Maliki's spokesman said his comments were "were misunderstood, mistranslated and not conveyed accurately."

This is the second time that Maliki has been completely mistranslated over withdrawal plans in a way that conveniently helps Obama. Obama himself promoted this falsehood in an editorial he wrote in the New York Times. You'd almost think there was some kind of agenda in this misreporting.

Update: Josh Marshall is not honest enough to admit he was wrong, and is still bitterly clinging to his original take. The closest he gets is saying that CNN is 'credulous' about the story. Credulous? The CNN story said Maliki flat-out refutes what Der Spiegel was reporting. Yet Marshall is scratching his head wondering why the entire MSM isn't trumpeting Der Spiegel's falsehood from coast to coast. Sure the MSM is in the tank for Obama, but they don't want to appear like utter fools, which is more than Josh Marshall can say.

Is Anthropogenic Global Warming A Hoax?

It appears that the 'consensus' on global warming promoted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was reached by fraud, as proven by members of the American Physical Society:

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity -- the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause -- has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.

Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton's paper an "expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and "extensive errors"

In an email to DailyTech, Monckton says, "I was dismayed to discover that the IPCC's 2001 and 2007 reports did not devote chapters to the central 'climate sensitivity' question, and did not explain in proper, systematic detail the methods by which they evaluated it. When I began to investigate, it seemed that the IPCC was deliberately concealing and obscuring its method."

Of course, none of this will change the activism behind the global warming myth. Such activism was never based on facts to begin with - it has all been nothing more than an excuse for Al Gore and his Greenshirts to pursue jihad against capitalism.

It is nice to see common sense vindicated here. You didn't need a degree in Climatology to know that global warming was voodoo science in service of a leftist agenda.

George W. Bush, Free Market Patriot

A statement of Reaganesque clarity from our President:

Wiser words were never spoken. I hope Obama saw this, with dread.

Hillary Polling Stronger Against McCain Than Obama

Why oh why do they bother polling McCain against Democrats who aren't even running for president?

Um . . . we are through with Hillary now, right?

Right??? Guys???

McCain fares better against Obama than he does against two other prominent Democrats. New York Senator Hillary Clinton leads McCain by eight points, 50% to 42%. Former Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2000, leads McCain 50% to 43%.

These numbers help explain why Election 2008 is competitive even though events so heavily favor the Democrats -- because the Republicans are on course to nominate their strongest possible general election candidate but the Democrats are not. Perhaps even more importantly, the data suggests that voters don’t see a potential McCain Administration as the third term of President Bush.

Only gullible Dems, and Dems hoping you are gullible really think McCain will be just like Bush. McCain broke with the Bush administration far too many times for this meme to grow and flourish. The very fact that McCain is not like Bush is one of the things propelling him along so well among independents.

Is The New Yorker Cover All That Farfetched?

First of all, everyone gets that the New Yorker cover was supposed to be a satire of what the 'rightwing' thinks of Obama. Never mind that the myth of Obama-the-Muslim was promulgated chiefly by Hillary Clinton's supporters during the primaries (some of who used the very lame excuse that they needed to send those emails around as a warning of 'what will come this November' at the hands of the Republicans), and never mind that the images of Obama in muslim-esque garb, and the Reverend Wright videos, were circulated by the MSM and not the RNC. Those pesky facts interfere with the narrative, you see, and history must always be rewritten so as to accomodate liberal mythbuilding.

Is the 'satire' really that outrageous though?

Well, Obama in a turban is a documented fact:

As for the image of Barack and Michelle as terrorists, well, Obama enjoys the support of Hamas, and the two of them are in fact very good friends with terrorist Bill Ayers:

Guess that also explains the flag burning in the fireplace in the New Yorker image.

The idea of Barack and Michelle as firebreathing radicals is not so farfetched either, considering their 20-year association with the black racist Jeremiah Wright, and Obama's contacts with the wretched and corrupt organization known as ACORN.

The cover image on the New Yorker is in very bad taste and not factually accurate. Obama is not a Muslim, and he has declared himself a Christian. That should settle it for everybody. Michelle Obama is an ungrateful whiner, but she is hardly a Black Pantherette toting an AK-47. The idea that Obama secretly likes Osama bin Laden is of course ridiculous. But satire works when it amplifies and magnifies facts - otherwise it is simply fantasy and not satire. Obama gave the artist who drew the New Yorker cover all the facts needed to do just that. The left is yelping because they know many of the elements of that image are just a little too believable.

Obama's Flip-Flop Blowback

Newsweek's latest poll is an ugly thing for Barack Obama.

His lead has shrunk considerably since Newsweek conducted their last poll - Obama has dropped 11 points versus McCain in under a month.

Obama now leads 44 to 41, just within the margin of error. The poll slightly oversamples Democrats to Republicans. However, this was a poll of registered voters, not likely voters. Democratic registered voters typically show up in smaller numbers than Republican registered voters, so this probably erodes Obama's support still further. The poll also oversampled women, who are even less likely to actually go out and vote, and who support Obama in greater numbers to begin with.

Considering that at this point in the election cycle the Democrat candidate is usually way ahead of the Republican candidate (Kerry was ahead by about 9 points in 2004, Dukakis by 16 in 1988. Both lost the election) the Obama campaign should be entering panic mode right about now.

How did this happen? Obama proved that he stands for absolutely nothing. His major drop in the polls has come just after he has tried to rebrand himself as a centrist. All he really did was prove that his views are as changeable as the wind, and that all that hope and change stuff means nothing. All of his flipflops on Iraq, campaign financing, FISA, the death penalty and so on show that he is just another politician who will do and say anything for a vote. It completely undercuts his image as an outsider purist untainted by business-as-usual politics.

Jesse Jackson, Jr. Throws Dad Under The Bus

In response to the Reverend Jackson saying he wants to 'cut Obama's nuts out' . . .

Even Jesse Jackson Jr., an Obama supporter and congressman from Chicago, condemned his dad's remarks. "I'm deeply outraged and disappointed in Reverend Jackson's reckless statements about Senator Barack Obama," he said.

This whole episode says volumes about how resentful and vengeful Jackson Sr. is about losing his self-appointed post as spokesman for black people everywhere. We can only hope this will push him off the stage for good, and good riddance. His hypocrisy and greedy corporate extortion harmed race relations, and his silly rhymes showed the paucity of his intellect. His poor leadership marginalized the needs and concerns of the black community, and if Barack Obama can move us beyond Jesse Jackson, Sr. we should all be grateful.

Jesse Jackson, Jr. is a far more respectable man than his father. He can actually speak without that strange diction his father uses, and he can string together cogent phrases without resorting to cliches or insipid 'poetry'. He also attained public office, something his father never could. His remarks about his father are quite scathing considering the source, which leads me to believe that he knows much more about the depth of his father's loathing for Obama than we even know after the 'nuts' comment.

P.S. The 'under the bus' phrase is wayyy overused, but still so much fun and seems obligatory in this case. It seems to be the cliche of the 'o8 election in the way the word 'gravitas' was in 2000.

George Carlin Didn't Worry About Bees, Trees, Whales or Snails

Sure Carlin was a leftist, but even he had only so much tolerance for leftist nonsense. He even sounds a bit like Rush Limbaugh in this clip:

Your Daily Triviality

What is the lupara?

What Does Obama Even Stand For?

Obama has flipped and flopped so much, I am wondering if he even knows what he stands for. His campaign is a pretty awesome and well-oiled machine right now, it is only hampered by a candidate who shows himself to be preternaturally incapable of providing any policy leadership whatsoever.

He said he would pull all troops out of Iraq in 16 months regardless of what the generals say. Now he says he will 'refine' his views by listening to the generals, then ignore them and pull all troops out of Iraq in 16 months regardless of what the generals say. [ed. technically, I guess this is an 'evolving' flip flop]

He was for an undivided Jerusalem before he was against it. I love it when Obama wraps a flip-flop around a gaffe.

He thought public campaign financing was going to fix our democracy. But now that it is clear that Obama is the real cure for Democracy, his grassroots fundraising operation has magically become a parallel alternative to public financing, and here's hoping you'll buy that lame excuse and not see this for the craven abandonment of principle that it really is.

He thought that the FISA bill represented such a threat to the Fourth Amendment, a usurpation of power by the executive, and an indication of rising authoritarianism that he changed his mind and voted for it.

He was for gun control until it became a hopelessly untenable political position. Gun control now shares space with the other luggage under the Greyhound, right next to his grandmother and Reverend Wright.

Now he seems to be flip-flopping on abortion, too.

Is nothing sacred anymore?

Bold prediction: as gas prices approach $5 a gallon and McCain gains political mileage by advocating drilling, Obama will 'refine' his petroleum views and suddenly the enviros go under the Greyhound as well. You know it's coming.

P.S. I wonder what the Kos Kidz think of Obama's evolving views. I never go to DailyKos unless Charles Johnson posts some anti-semitic rant from there, so I don't know if they realize yet that Obama has become the very thing they hate above all: a DNC DLC democrat. I'd call him 'republican-lite' but that would be a low blow.

The Ugly Democratic Primaries Were The Republicans' Fault

This kind of thing really irks me. Liberals are famous for rewriting history to their own advantage, and this presidential campaign has already seen quite a bit of that (mostly from the Obama campaign trying to keep up with his gaffes). Here, from Slate, is yet another liberal moaning about how Republicans have cornered the patriotism market, and engages in some ridiculous revisionism along the way:

The attacks on Dukakis—which tapped into nativist fears about his swarthy, beetle-browed looks, his ethnic last name, and his Jewish wife—stand alongside the Willie Horton ads from that year as prime exhibits in one of the sleaziest campaigns in presidential history. And this year we've already heard echoes of it, with the Republicans casting Barack Obama as un-American—an exotic foreigner raised partly in Indonesia with a Muslim middle name, married to a woman who said that only her husband's political achievements have made her "proud" of her country, a cosmopolitan elitist too snooty to wear a flag pin in his lapel or clasp his hand to his breast during the national anthem.

Clever. Liberal writers are desperately hoping that you will forget that the ugliness of the Democratic primary was instigated by . . . Democrats, and are trying to make you think that those emails castigating Obama as a muslim were really sent by Karl Rove. Quite reminiscent of Jay Carney blaming Republicans for rumors about the Michelle Obama 'whitey' video, a video chiefly promoted by Democratic clown blogger Larry Johnson.

This is another of those silly leftist conceits: that Democrats never play smashmouth politics, never lie about their opponents, and never engage in smear tactics. Of course the 2008 presidential primaries showed the world how nasty and savage the Dems' political instincts really are, which is why this revisionist campaign is now underway.

Real Patriots Hate America

. . . and only fake patriots actually love America.

Rob noted a self-loathing liberal still feeling shame over Abu Ghraib.

RealClearPolitics links to another guilty liberal who comes up with lots and lots of reasons to hate America (yet who oddly chooses to live here). He starts with that classic formulation: 'It’s not that I’m anti-American . . . ' and then goes on to be exactly that, laying the blame for all of our problems on those uniquely American ills of greed, ignorance and patriotism.

This is one of those embarrasing conceits of the left, that if everyone knew what they knew, wow, they'd spit on the flag too. If you love America and think it is a great country, you've obviously never opened a book that 'mattered'.

These leftists are guilty of exactly what they accuse the patriots of, that is, only seeing one side of the equation. Uncovering the crimes of America is what gives them worth, and assembling lists of America's shortcomings brightens their day.

Who wants a sourpuss like that around on the Fourth of July anyway?