Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Global warming hysteria, 1989

Check out this snippet. Sidenote: Larry King looked pretty good back then for already being 85 years young.



If you played a drinking game based on the fallacies, sensationalism, and unwarranted assumptions just in this three-and-a-half-minute promo or whatever it was, you'd be in the the hospital. Or the morgue.

That was 21 years ago (points out the guy who almost flunked consumer math). Anything seriously changed since then, either in the climate or in the hysteria of warmenists? Nothing much in the former; in the latter, of course, global warming has become "climate change." That's about it.

(via commenter Leigh on this Tim Blair post. Gotta note the one guy's reply to Leigh's comment: "I see they hired Ted Baxter’s brother to narrate the show.")

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Quote of the Day!

From Roll Call:
A House Democrat [Steny Hoyer] who previously helped lead the charge for closing [Guantanamo] had this to say when asked why he is no longer demanding action on the issue: “I forgot.”
(via commenter "Adam" on this Althouse post)

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Nickel and dimed

1. Just re-registered the venerable Escort. For the last half-dozen years it's been around $26 to do so. This year? Sixty bucks. More than double. Small cheese, but for most vehicles the fee is going to go up by the same amount for another two years. In other words, I'll be paying well over $100 to register by 2012.

2. During the early-mid aughts drought years, Denver Water mounted a huge ad campaign urging Denveronkians to conserve water.

It (along with mandatory watering restrictions) worked! In fact it worked so well (around a 30 percent reduction in water use, IIRC) that Denver Water not once, but at least twice raised rates because they weren't getting enough revenue (allegedly) to maintain infrastructure. Until fairly recently DW mailed bills every two months; ours was generally somewhere in the $50-$60 range. Now it's every month, and the bill this month was $47. Again, a near doubling.

3. The city is apparently going to do some work on one of the streets running by the D-blog manse. They set up "no parking" signs for the length of both sides of the block last Wednesday, forcing everyone who normally parked there to find new places.

The signs are still there. No work has been done. Worse, some of the people forced to find new places to park (including a couple of tenants) neglected to check the street sweeping signs in their new spots. Tickets all 'round! (recently raised from $20 to $25).

Denver and Colorado: livin' the Democrat dream.

Update: Okay, one more, and by far the worst: Xcel, Colorado's public gas and electric supplier--trendy misspelling is required for the names of mega-monopolies these days--just instituted a two-tier system of charging for electricity. Up to 500 KwH, just under five cents per; over that, nine cents. Again, almost double. This being an apartment building, we naturally go well over 500 (this month 1194 KwH). This alone added $82 to my bill (that's our thing: we pay utilities). Again, nearly double last year's bill from the same month.

And all in the chase for the retarded will-o-the-wisp of global warming. Right now Xcel is spending that extra money converting four coal-fired plants to "cleaner" gas, on "renewable" energy, and on "enhancing" their "public outreach" to teach us why this is worthwhile. A little while ago I chided a couple of funny-looking guys over at JWP's for being Eeyores about the future. Not so sure anymore. As a small (5'10") businessman, I know I can't sustain much more of this. If Cap-n-Trash happens, I'm (eventually) done. What am I gonna do? Raise rent 400 bucks a month for every tenant?

Update II: You know, when I took the GRE I scored almost average on the math portion. Don't know if this speaks to the relative innumeracy of GRE-takers or my huge throbbing natural intelligence (having almost flunked "Consumer Math"--i.e., "Making Change" in high school), but I made a mistake in the Xcel example. I would still have been charged for the KwHs over 500, but at the old rate, which means the increase in my bill purely from the plus-500 KwH hike is about $41. Still, this is roughly a 25 percent increase (check my math).

Update III: Also should add that this hike runs only from June through September of each year. It's specifically designed to limit people's use of a/c. Mike Rosen (a local guy who's the only talk-show host I listen to when I can) had some spokesginkess from Xcel on a few weeks ago who pushed the line that the hike was all about "choice," as in, "we want to make people aware that they have a choice to run their air conditioning or not."

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Wart disturbs universe at rally for Lynne Stewart

In Foley Square, NYC. Nothing new. "We have ways, we have means, we have capacities. What we have to have is consciousness and will. If you're going to bring this system down, it has to be brought down in terms it understands. In the terms by which it maintains itself." [. . .]

That is, of course, violence. He says the U.S. has been a fascist state since 1919 (assume he means the Palmer Raids, etc.). Lenny, Mumia, Rapidans all figure in. Warning: Drummers abound, and Wart, wearing a t-shirt that says "Patriot Act" with the red circle and line through it and clutching a dead ciggie, can't help matching his cadences to them:

God, what an asshole.

(via Don DeBar on Vimeo)

Friday, July 16, 2010

Churchill says he'll wait

Terrorist abettor and future Wart-wife Lynne Stewart got nailed yesterday:

Lynne Stewart, the lawyer sentenced in 2006 to 28 months in prison for aiding convicted terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, got a new sentence Thursday -- 10 years -- after an appeals court ruled late last year her trial judge went too light on her.

Southern District Judge John Koeltl could've given the 70-year-old Stewart 30 years, but went easy on her considering her age and failing health.

But Koetl wasn't humored by Stewart's scoffing at her original sentencing by saying in 2006 she could do the time "standing on her head." The statement won her a standing ovation at the time.

In sentencing on Thursday, a haggard Stewart admitted she was crazy to think jail time would be easy.

"I have learned that no one, but particularly this 70-year-old woman, can do 28 months standing on their head," she reportedly said. "I was wrong."

(via commenter "penfold" at AoS)

Update: Wart weighs in. His assholishness has not noticeably diminished.

(via JWP)

Update II: Vote Love!

(h/t Willibeaux)

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Tree murdered

Finally got around to reading (well, power-skimming) Chris Monckton's (none of that "Lord" crap around here, buddy) extremely detailed takedown of some gink at the University of St. Thomas who pretty systematically distorts Monckton's skeptical views on global warming.

Monckton's response is clearly a prelude to a libel suit; whether he follows through is another thing. If you haven't already, go read it. Quite entertaining. My favorite stretch starts at question 231, the section titled "The Australian dead tree lie," on the gink's response to Monckton's alleged opinions of alleged sea-level rise in the Maldives. Question 231 from Monckton (he asks the first hunk over and over):

Please confirm that in the following passage I have accurately encapsulated your criticism of me for having allegedly “discounted” sea-level rise:

“Let’s move on to the next major topic of Chris Monckton’s presentation: that’s when he began to discount sea-level rise. He said that ... there was no sea-level rise in the Maldives, which are islands in the Indian Ocean: let’s see what some real researchers are saying about that subject” (48). You then cite papers by two researchers who disagree with Professor Morner’s results showing no sea-level rise in the Maldives (49)."

Question 236:

Did I not explain in my talk that Professor Mörner, who had concluded after a decade-long survey that was probably the most detailed survey of sea-level rise ever to have been conducted anywhere in the world that sea level in the Maldives was similar to what it had been 1250 years ago, had found [an] uprooted tree by the shore, had been puzzled that it was still in leaf, had asked the locals how it had come to be uprooted and had learned from them that a team of Australian environmentalists, realizing the tree was good evidence that there had been no sea-level rise in the Maldives for 40 years or so, had uprooted the tree to prevent anyone else from using it as evidence?

Never run across that one before. Some of these alarmists are as bad as Warm Churchill.

Update: At WUWT, Monckton in a guest post notes that St. Thomas's Associate Prof Abraham (the gink) has shortened his presentation supposedly debunking Monckton (band name!) by ten minutes--according to Monckton, to remove libelous material. Monckton still appears intent on going for him. Get the genetically engineered bio-fuels corn, Edna, and no, don't pop it--I'm a ruminant:
Taking out his direct libels has reduced the length of his talk by 10 minutes. To my own lawyers, Abraham’s retreat will be of interest, because it is in effect an admission that his talk is libelous, and that he and his university know it is libelous. Though his new version corrects some of the stupider and more egregious errors in the original, many crass errors remain, including errors of simple arithmetic that are surely disfiguring in a “scientist” presuming to correct mine.
Unclear to me is whether Monckton will pursue his suit (which he still hasn't said he'll do) in the US or Great Britain. GB, if he has any sense, though I don't doubt he might win here as well. Actual malice, reckless disregard for the truth, etc.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Why is everybody always pickin' on me?

Westword's "Off Limits" page this week notices that Wart wrote the foreword to the comic book 500 Years of Resistance, about--well, I'm sure you can figure it out. Churchill, careful scholar that he is, says he received the invitation to write the foreword "with a considerable degree of skepticism," but overcame it after he found the book to be, shockingly, "a revelation."

Enough of a revelation that the foreword, according to Westword, is 13 pages long. One assumes that doesn't include footnotes. The Wart-lavin' Westword (Michael Roberts?) is unusually snarky (tho still very mild) in this little tidbit.

Small stuff: Your darling D-blog (not to mention the Pirate with the Parrot from Petticoat Junction) had this story almost three months ago--though not any quotes from the foreword, since the book just came out.

Second, why do I keep seeing assertions like this: "In 2009, a judge found that Churchill had been wrongfully fired; he was awarded $1 in damages . . . "

A judge? Naves found that Wart was wrongfully fired? I don't think so.

JWP has a bigger hunk from the piece (and had it first, the spalpeen).

Friday, July 09, 2010

Doggie-fridge meld follow-up

Never say the D-blog doesn't give readers (if any) closure on old stories. The Gamera:
A former University of Colorado student convicted of felony animal cruelty for taping a dog upside down to a fridge last year was sentenced to 30 days in jail and three years probation Friday.

A few minutes earlier [21-year-old Abby] Toll tearfully addressed the court saying she was "deeply sorry for what happened to Rex last year."
Rex is the dog.
"I am so ashamed," she said. "There is no doubt that a horrible, bizarre thing happened in that apartment that night."
Distancing. A common literary effect. Wonder if she was an English major.
She called herself an "animal lover" and said she kept Rex, who was then an 8-month-old shiba inu, in her thoughts every day.
Now Rex is a two-year-old Lab. Scientists call it traumatic transmutation.
The case generated media coverage from around the world and spawned a collection of Web sites condemning Toll. . . .
Spawned. That's a good word.
Toll nearly came face to face with her victim Friday when prosecutor David Cheval asked the judge if he could bring Rex, who has since been renamed Yoshi, into the courtroom for the sentencing. Berkenkotter denied the request, saying only service animals are allowed in the courthouse.
There are pics of Yoshi at the courthouse. Yoshi. God. Let me at his new parents and I'ma tape them to a fridge. Buddhists, no doubt, so I can beat them up first. Mebbe. Can you imagine the PTSD resulting when you go from "Rex" to "Yoshi"? (But don't worry about that, as you'll see.)
Toll appeared most devastated when the judge ordered her not to have contact with animals for the duration of her probation. Toll lives with her mother and her mother's dog in Chicago.
Bit awkward, what? One of them will have to stay in a kennel. Or the Motel Six. Yeah, same diff.
Toll was arrested in April 2009 after police received a call of a domestic dispute at a Boulder apartment building. Inside, they found Rex wrapped in packing tape and stuck to the side of a refrigerator.

Toll admitted binding and attaching the dog to the fridge, saying she did it as a way of getting back at Beck for paying more attention to the dog than to her, according to police. . . .
Paying more attention to the dog than to her. Your point being?
Maximon told the court that Beck was the one who actually bound the dog, and that his client simply stuck him up on the side of a fridge. She lied to police about her role in the incident to protect Beck, he said. . . .

Lots of allegations of abuse and sad childhood follow.
She [I forget who "she" is] described to the court how Toll painstakingly bound Rex's snout, feet and tail with packing tape and hair ties, before adhering the animal to the fridge with more tape.
Hair ties? Adhering? The boyfriend was nailed too, a while ago.
Yoshi, who recovered from his injuries [no mention of physical "injuries" in the earlier story--you wanna google, be my guest], was adopted by Shannon Park and his wife, Amy, who live in Castle Rock.

Park said Yoshi had nightmares for the first couple of weeks after being taped to the fridge. He said Yoshi is fearful around people and other dogs he doesn't know and has been seen by an animal behaviorist.
PTSD.

Of course, Billy Bob is fearful around people and other dogs too, and you know what I do? Tell him to suck it up (his vomit on my pristine hardwood floors, that is) or I'll tape his maggoty ass to the friggin' refrigerator. Works every time.

Update: Billy Bob's 12th birthday is coming up this month. To quote Cary Grunt in His Girl Friday, he's ohhlldd. I might try for some pics illustrating his ancientness. He might retaliate.

Update II: Thought some about how to imitate in writing how Cary said that in the movie. Couldn't come up with anything that looked good.

Update III: E-mailers claim there was no parrot on Petticoat Junction. Guess it was Edgar Buchanan.