Groundhog Punxatawny Phil Versus UN IRGC: Phil Wins!

It's Groundhog Day and the movie with endless iterations reminds us that the Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is still working overtime, as global freezing in the '70s morphs into global warming as the latest Chicken Little delirium tremens the MSM and UN scammers are foisting upon a besotted public opinion.

The attached article has the Methusaleh Groundhog evidently living since before 1886, but this old specimen of Pennsylvania Dutch folklore will almost certainly be more
accurate
than the hilarious pontifications of a super-special 113-country UN study which blames it all, like the Time Man/Person of the Year, on YOU!

So start feeling bad right now, sell the SUV, and ride a bike to the local grocery [I Tactually have two Taiwanese e-go electric bikes which I and spouse ride to the foodstore with, except both now have flat tires which are virtually impossible to re-inflate---just another design flaw]. My thoughts on Phil's commonsensical accuracy were pre-empted by Argggh! from the freezing Iraqi hinterlands. I will plagiarize myself from January 4th here:

may have ended up in the dustbin of history, but the tradition of political commissars has not ended. One with the ludicrous name of Rockefeller and the other a transgendered Republican have sent Exxon a threatening letter saying that the debate on Global Warming is hereby over.

The High Church of GW does not permit latitudinarian dalliances with the scientific method. The Holy Curia of the Royal Academicides and pseudo-scientists like the inventor of the Information Highway and also the Lockbox, Earthtones Al Bore, have declared ex cathedra that whomsoever shall disagree with their exalted opinionations shall be subject to Inquisition and even "Windfall Taxes."

What used to be a democracy in DC is now evolving into a populist revival along the lines of Malthusian prophecies, Luddite wrecking crews, etc, as the WSJ opines:

environmentalists have been wrong about almost every other apocalyptic claim they've made: global famine, overpopulation, natural resource exhaustion, the evils of pesticides, global cooling, and so on. Perhaps it's useful to have a few folks outside the "consensus" asking questions before we commit several trillion dollars to any problem.

Often wrong but never in doubt, say the IPCC doctrinal heirs to political commissar Suslov in the old USSR and Cardinal Ottaviani in the ancient College of Cardinals. Or as the Wahhabis like to put it, ijtihad, their greatest enemy, as it is the Islamic struggle for the truth outside rigid categories defined by rigid strictures on independent thinking.

Actually, Canadian Prime Minister Harper may have the goods on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the science by majority, in this case a tyrannical majority, which is comprised of go-along-to-get-along "climatologists" and other bureaucrats and petty functionaries of the mind. The rest of the world, Harper divined back in 2002, hates the USA for its continuous economic ascendancy and wants to drag it back down into the pitiful Keynesian nitwittery paint-by-numbers economies in their own squalid backyards.

Free markets ala Milton Friedman would deprive these functionaries of their raison d'etre. Their government meddling and taxes are what pays them and their scientific panels to measure, calibrate and subsequently cry out that the sky is falling!

Even non-socialist crony-capitalism countries fear truly free markets. The economic growth of the USA, which is perhaps 23% of the entire world economy, is what galls the Davos crowd [h/t: Dennis Mangan] and other senior functionaries from getting their meat-claws on American assets in order to tax the squat out of them. The IPCC reminds me of the "North-South Dialogue" of the seventies, which had whinging poor countries in the southern hemisphere guilt-tripping the industrial north for all sorts of freebies and emoluments.

The other night I watched Sens. Boxer and Inhofe on Larry King and Inhofe kept referring to statistics while Boxer referred constantly to drowning polar bears and King's Man-on-the-Street outtakes had people telling the camera "how bad they feel" that Katrina was the result of AGW.

Thoughts beat feelings, and while the MSM will act as cheerleaders for the ultra-left socialist agitpreppies at Davos, Paris, and other chic Comintern gatherings, I will bet against Sens. Snowe and Rockefeller and put my money on Punxatawny Phil.

Read Consilience, by Edward O. Wilson, for why I myself am a contrarian on AGW to the "consensus" of a tyrannical majority of "scientists."

Just a feeeeling I've got!!!

Hitchens Makes Mincemeat of Old Left Radicals

The Perfessoriat, the BBC, and George Galloway all come under the withering fire of the redoubtable Christopher Hitchens, reviewing Nick Cohen's book, What's Left? How the Liberals Lost Their Way. CH as usual eviscerates with a sharp scalpel all the frauds on the far left who still love to hate Bush/Blair/democracy.

Some choice cuts:

...there are thousands and thousands of middle-aged lefties for whom their once-revolutionary "credentials"” are all they have left to show for a lifetime of "activism," and who could not face their friends — or, perhaps, their students — if they found themselves endorsing a war fought by British or American soldiers. (I myself remember repressing a twinge of annoyance at the idea that the assault on civilisation represented by the 9/11 attacks would drive my anti-Kissinger book from the front page where I still believe it belonged.) But Cohen goes further: "I wanted anything associated with Tony Blair to fail, because that would allow me to return to the easy life of attacking him."”

It is this sentence, and its implications, that make his book an exceptional and necessary one. Cohen has no problem with those who are upset about state-sponsored exaggerations of the causes of war, or furious about the bungled occupation of Iraq that has ensued. People who think this is the problem are not his problem. Here’s his problem: the people who would die before they would applaud the squaddies and grunts who removed hideous regimes from Afghanistan and Iraq, yet who happily describe Islamist video-butchers and suicide-murderers as a “resistance”. Those who do this are not “anti-war” at all, but are shadily taking the other side in a conflict where the moral and civilisational stakes are extremely high.

Treason on the left is not new, but has become the media shibboleth with Dysfunctional-Bush-Hatred and Global Warming the new armaments in the long leftist war against free enterprise and political freedom. Of course, no one dissects these walking talking cadavers better than Hitchens, himself a veteran Man of the Left.

It’s all here: from the pseudo-radicals who said there was nothing to choose between Nazi imperialism in Europe and British rule in India, through the supporters of the Hitler-Stalin pact, all the way to those who defended Slobodan Milosevic as a socialist and those who took, quite literally took, money from the bloody hands of Saddam Hussein. Just in the past decade or so, had this “anti-war” rabble had its way, we would have seen Kuwait stay part of Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo cleansed and annexed by “Greater” Serbia, and the Taliban retaining control of Afghanistan. You might think that such a record would lead its adherents to be dismissed as a silly and sinister fringe, but instead it is they who pose as the principled radicals and their opponents who are treated with unconcealed disdain in the universities and on the BBC.

This betrayal (because there is no other word for it) has been made possible in part by a degraded version of multiculturalism. The hard left has junked its historic secularism, to say nothing of its principles of equality for females and homosexuals, to make common cause with Muslim outfits some of which are associated in other countries with the extreme right. It has done this by the use of nonsense terms such as “Islamophobia”, which are designed to give the no-less nonsensical impression that Islam is some kind of persecuted ethnicity. But the vile attacks by Islamists on the Jews (Britain’s oldest minority) and on India (Britain’s most important democratic ally after the United States) show the truly reactionary and hateful character of the opportunist alliance between failed ex-Stalinists and fanatical theocrats. For Cohen, as for some others of us, this is no longer a difference of emphasis within the family of the left. It is the adamant line of division in a bitter fight against a new form of fascism, at home no less than abroad.

I think he is right to identify the opening of this crisis with the events in Bosnia and Kosovo, because in that instance it was America (pushed by the supposed “poodle” Blair) that used force to prevent the annihilation of a Muslim community. Those who opposed that rescue operation, and who yet denounce the fight against Bin-Ladenism and its allies as “targeting” Muslims, have given the game away and shown that they hate only Anglo-American policy, to a degree that results in blindness. Meanwhile, Israel is always and everywhere to be denounced (and not always wrongly) while the other product of British partition policy during 1947-48, the part-rogue and part-failed state named Pakistan, is never indicted in the same way for its numberless bigotries and aggressions. This is bad faith, and needs to be unmasked as such. Cohen’s book is an admirable example of self- criticism and self-examination, using intellectual honesty as a means of illuminating a much wider canvas.

Like St. Paul who was a sort of one-man Mossad for the Orthodox Jewry of his day, CH has had the scales fall from his eyes and recognizes the shallow, superficial twaddle purveyed by the High Priests of the Liberal Left, be it useful idiots like Gore on GW or former-rightie opportunists like Arianna Puffington and her attendant Host twittering at the moon as they flutter skyward above the darkling plain.

CH ends with a recommendation to read another book:

Do not feel that you have to be a leftist or liberal to read it, because it engages with an argument that is crucial for all of us, and for our time.

Read on... books:
Terror and Liberalism by Paul Berman (Norton £9.99)
A huge influence on Cohen’s ideas

The long demise of a defunct intelligentsia continues, but as their moral authority erodes, the shrill hysteria increases, so leftists are left to tabloid issues like the Plame fiasco or pseudo-heroism by barely literate actors and other showmen.

O'Reilly gets Fouled, Strikes Back and gets Called for Second Foul

Howie Kurtz at the Washington Post bemoans the condemnation and wrath Bill O'Reilly has displayed against NBC, which has scuttled leftward with the political winds. Kurtz knows his inside-the-Beltway audience shares NBC's leftish tilt, and panders to its delusion that NBC is "centrist" while he tries to deconstruct O'Reilly in his usual soft-pedaling manner.

He brings up Keith Olbermann, whose rants called "special comments" have been put on the blogosphere's most prominently ultra-left "media blogs" as audience-boosting ploys for the farthest reaches of the fever swamps.

As an obiter dictum, isn't it interesting that the favorite POLITICAL columnists of the loony left are failed Broadway critic Frank Rich, former Enron-consultant professor Paul Krugman and TV ex-sportscaster KOlbermann, who flunked out at his sports outpost by reportedly outlandish behavior and insufferable arrogance. Perfect job description for a ultra-left political observer, including the poor soul whom Kurtz chided O'Reilly for calling a lunatic, a New Age poster girl named Sansura Taylor whose mother must have had some bad acid while carrying little Sansura in the womb. Sansura's demented solecisms betray a City-by-the-Bay mindset so deranged that O'Reilly can't help himself and keeps inviting her on his show. Her IQ is such that he could be chided for cruelty to animals.

Kurtz's entire article is slanted pro-NBC and against O'Reilly, going so far as to quote:

Olbermann says O'Reilly's latest offensive "reeks a little bit of an attempt to get some attention," though the former sportscaster admits he started the feud as a way of raising his profile.

Just burying the lede as a final dependent clause, which is Kurtz's manner of writing. Let's say O'Reilly shook off the small dog biting his ankle as a more appropriate trope for the situation.

Kurtz quotes Joe Scarborough extensively, as though this recanted GOP congressman were a "conservative." Joe is tacking with the prevailing winds, though his cultural conservatism is still hostile to what he calls "Hollyweird."

Without defining the previous "layer of farce," Kurtz takes a cheap shot at BOR:

Adding an extra layer of farce, O'Reilly now regularly features a body-language expert, who said that Mitchell displayed "high level of uncomfortability" during her appearance on the show.

The fact is that O'Reilly did not condemn all of NBC as Kurtz deceptively implies, and actually praised the Today Show and Mitchell and some other relatively objective or centrist commentators. Though you wouldn't know this from Kurtz's hit-piece drive-by substance hidden by his soothing style.

But although Chris Matthews gets a free pass at saying Cheney "never passes up a chance to kill," an SF blogger can start a campaign against free speech from the left without any objection from the MSM, who will call right-wing comments that resemble Matthews' senseless rant against the VP "hate speech" and call for its abolishment---hang the First Amendment. Watch this blogger get on MSM and garner praise for trying to limit talk-radio, which is an outlet that entertains tax-paying working people on the job, obviously not a left-wing constituency.

Remember Alec Baldwin calling for Henry Hyde to be assassinated on network TV back during the height of the Clinton Impeachment for lying under oath? I do, but Orwell's memory hole has swallowed that up too.

And to switch from the prophetic 1984 to Animal Farm put it, some animals are more equal than others.

The Rottenest Generation: What Has Posterity Done for Me?

Paul Samuelson has a good article on the Baby Boomers, who are going to begin to hit sixty-five en masse soon. As a Medicare recipient, I can't blame them, but a little like the Euros, the future generations are going to pay the bill for the retired Boomers.

Strange how the Greatest Generation could produce what might be the Rottenest like Yin produces Yang. Or whatever.

Both Libs & Conservs "Stuck on Stupid?"

Arnold Kling has a libertarian take on the fundamental hypothesis that only about 10% of the population invest any real energy in politics. And of that decimal, each of the paired-off opponents tend to give their own predilections an overwhelming bias in sorting out new information. As Kling succinctly sums up:

The masses' strategy for avoiding truth is to make a low investment in understanding; the elites' strategy is to make a large investment in selectively choosing which facts and arguments to emphasize or ignore.

So we have Matthew Arnold's "ignorant armies" on a "darkling plain." Or do we?

I believe in democracy because I distrust the elites. I distrust the elites because I believe that self-deception is widespread, and the elites are particularly skilled at it. Accordingly, I believe that it is important for those in power to have the humility of knowing that they may be voted out of office.

Others believe in democracy because they are hoping to see the triumph of a particular elite. Many liberals want to see sympathetic technocrats manipulating the levers of government, nominally for the greater good. I see government technocrats as inevitably embedded in a political system that inefficiently processes information. The more they attempt, the more damage they are likely to do.[MY EMPHASIS] Many conservatives want to see government used for "conservative ends." However, I believe that the more that government tries to correct the flaws of families, the more flawed families will become.

"That government governs best which governs least," said Honest Abe, before the onset of the colossal catastrophe which post-war American government has become. I thank God daily for Medicare, but a single-payer system would be Iraq times ten, a catastrophe which would make Canadian wait-times move from months to years, just to take one example.

I worked for the US government for over a decade, and dealt with it in one way or another for three on a working basis. The bigger government is, the worse it operates. When I was a Beltway Bandito working with Booz Allen Hamilton, I learned of an unpublished study concerning the Pentagon which had been sponsored and paid for by the military itself. It concerned how best to cut back the size of the military bureaucracy. [This was in the early days of the Reagan presidency.] My fellow consultant-informant told me that the study had suggested that ANY WAY that personnel would be cut back would be preferable to the overpopulation of military technocrats and bureaucrats now functioning in the DC area. Indeed, the suggestion was made in the study [never published] that in the interests of efficiency and economy, it would be better if one out of every three names, regardless of rank or position, would be randomly selected out of the Pentagon phonebook and dismissed from their job than it would be to let the bloated payroll/personnel size be maintained at previous levels. This was obviously meant to make a point and not to be carried out, but the study never saw the light of day. I wonder why and who killed it?

Urban legend?

"And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."

Welcome to the post post-modern world.

Hezbollah Racketeers Financing Hamas Rocketeers

The New York Post reports via the Jerusalem Post that

the AP/Reuters-backed crime syndicate Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors are rewarding Palestinian terrorists with thousands of dollars for each homemade rocket that hits southern Israel, according to Israeli intelligence. [Whether Hezbollah was printing these dollars in its south Beirut counterfeiting facilities or were getting Ben Franklins from Iran was still unclear. MY COMMENT]

The size of the payoffs depends on the number of Israelis killed or wounded, the Jerusalem Post reported yesterday.

Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based guerrilla group that fought a border war with Israel last summer, is smuggling cash from Iran into the Gaza Strip to pay off different terrorist organizations who launch homemade Qassam rockets into the western Negev region of Israel.

"Sometimes, they are paid before the attack and sometimes they submit a bill to Lebanon and the money gets transferred a short time later," a security official said.

The article goes on to note that Hamas is accusing Israel of arming the Fatah Party of President Mahmoud Abbas via Egypt:

Meanwhile, with Israel's blessing, Egypt has delivered a large arms shipment to forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, officials said yesterday - the latest Israeli attempt to boost the embattled leader in his bloody conflict with Hamas fanatics.

The Palestinians keep lurching down history's saddest narrative of missed opportunities to end up by electing a terrorist government. The one real chance for a state for themselves and a semblance of peace was passed up by serial embezzler Arafat because he believed three quarters of a loaf or more just wasn't enough. But a detached observer must give some credence to the argument that, like Castro, Saddam, Kim Jung-Il and a number of other entrenched socialist regimes in Africa, the corruption level of these workers' paradises does not permit change for the better.

Like billionaires Castro and Dear Leader, mult-millionaire Arafat thought the status quo of serfdom in an enclave better than a breakthrough to nationhood and peace. It would have hurt his investments, perhaps, and subjected him to humiliating processes such as genuinely free elections.

Ex-billionaire former Socialist leader Saddam Hussein was unavailable for comment.