Away from it all

As you may have guessed from the dearth of posts over the past week, your friendly neighborhood Vulture is away from it all. By "it all", I mean the job, the presures, the foul weather, etc.

Deadeye and I have taken a much-needed vacation to the great Southwest, leaving our attack Yorkies in the capable hands of our boys.

Regular blogging - whatever that means - will resume next week.

AMF, ya'll.

Who to believe?

There is a debate tactic called 'appeal to authority'. This tactic is used quite frequently by the Gaia crowd or other credulous types when discussing AGW. "So-and-so the climate scientist from XYZ university says..." is supposed to make whatever so-and-so said gospel, because so-and-so has all of the right credentials from the right school(s) and is in the business of studying climate.

It is my opinion that the LAST person you ever want to believe with regards to AGW is the guy who makes his living studying it.

Think I'm nuts? Think again.

Who are you more likely to believe when a discussion of poverty in America comes up? The Director of HHS, whose livelihood depends on the existence of American poverty? Or an independent party without a dog in the fight?

Likewise the guy who has a choice between declaring that the sky is falling and collecting a fat paycheck vs. saying that nothing is amiss and having to go find some other way to make a living might, shall we say, tend to - how to put this delicately? - shade his findings somewhat.

It's not like science has the best track record when it comes to honesty. From the alchemists of ancient times to the Cold Fusion fraud 30 years ago to the Tobacco Lobby "scientists" who insisted that there was no link between cigarettes and cancer in the face of ever-mounting evidence, "science" has hardly distinguished itself. For every Isaac Newton there is a Michael Mann, with his ridiculous climate hockey stick graph that was risible on its face. For every Albert Einstein there is a clutch of grifters like the IPCC crowd.

You get my point. An 'appeal to authority' argument is the work of a lazy mind. And lazy minds tend to believe in AGW.

A retraction of sorts

CAJim seems to think I owe him a retraction. It seems that the quote I cited in my last post, which I got second-hand from the Tizona Group, is misleading, and that both Tizona and I have misused the quote to misrepresent the meaning of the AGW-worshiper's words.

Ignore for the time being that the inclusion of "let's fight global warming" in an alleged expression of condolences to the Japanese people is a de facto piggy-backing of two unrelated calamities and leads to the impression that the warming-worshiper is linking the two. CAJim says I owe a retraction, and, by God, a retraction I'll give.

Okay, CAJim, Nilsson's comment doesn't link the earthquake and tsunami to global warming. But these "scientists" do link earthquakes and tsunamis to AGW.

Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and landslides are some of the additional catastrophes that climate change and its rising sea levels and melting glaciers could bring, a geologist says.

Note the weasel word "could". That's so that the "scientist" has plausible deniability when his patently ridiculous premise is dismissed by real scientists.

And, lest you think that the preceding comment was cherry-picked, there's this one.

Scientists are to outline dramatic evidence that global warming threatens the planet in a new and unexpected way – by triggering earthquakes, tsunamis, avalanches and volcanic eruptions.

Reports by international groups of researchers – to be presented at a London conference next week – will show that climate change, caused by rising outputs of carbon dioxide from vehicles, factories and power stations, will not only affect the atmosphere and the sea but will alter the geology of the Earth.

Of course, you have to read on to get to the part where the polar ice caps have to disappear and the glaciers melt away for this to happen...

But the question wasn't "Do AGW quack scientists attribute earthquakes and tsunamis to AGW?" It was, "Does this particular AGW quack scientist attribute a particular earthquake and tsunami to AGW?" The answer is, apparently, no.

So CAJim has his retraction. Who is CAJim, and why is he so adamant in seeking a retraction from your friendly, neighborhood Vulture?

CAJim is a common troll. He is a habitue of that den of bigotry, FLDS Texas. He wants to discredit the Vulture because I have written some extraordinarily mean (but true) things about his boyfriend, the Caput a Palos (hereinafter referred to as The Prickette). CAJim thinks that by discrediting anything I say he discredits the factual things I wrote about his butt buddy.

Sorry Jim. You lose. Nobody who reads this blog on a regular basis is going to believe you or your fellow FLDS Texas bigots over me.

Nobody.

A pseudo-religion self-parodies

Okay, Tizona Group beat me to this item. But that doesn't mean I can't add my $0.02.

Hours after a massive earthquake rattled Japan, environmental advocates connected the natural disaster to global warming. The president of the European Economic and Social Committee, Staffan Nilsson, issued a statement calling for solidarity in tackling the global warming problem.

“Some islands affected by climate change have been hit,” said Nilsson. “Has not the time come to demonstrate on solidarity — not least solidarity in combating and adapting to climate change and global warming?”

“Mother Nature has again given us a sign that that is what we need to do,” he added.

Are you effing kidding me? Seriously? Do these imbeciles understand that earthquakes are caused by plate tectonics, NOT by the weather? Attributing an earthquake to climate makes about as much sense as attributing an asteroid collision with Earth to climate.

As if there was ever any doubt, this is the final proof that Global Warming has absolutely nothing to do with science and everything to do with religion. Just as a believer in the Almighty sees God in all things, so an AGW believer sees warming in everything. Drought = warming. Flooding = warming. Severe weather = warming. Balmy weather = warming. Heat = warming. Cold = warming.

These AGW fetishists are so caught up in their superstition that no amount of evidence can convince them that there are things that happen whose occurrence has absolutely nothing to do with climate.

I recommend checking out the Tizona post. It's got some good stuff in it. The best part for me was this quote.

Global warming alarmists are to natural disasters what the Westboro Baptist Church is to military funerals.

You got THAT right.

The circus is in town

The execrable Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is holding hearings ostensibly to discuss how the US can mitigate the terrorism threat emanating from radical Islam. This is the same Peter King who for decades was an open supporter of the terrorist organization, Sinn Fein.

A periodic perversion of America's ideals, regrettably witnessed at the U.S. Capitol, is an "investigation" in which Congress labels people as unAmerican because of ethnicity, religious belief or conviction.

Rep. Peter King, R-New York, used to defend the Irish Republican Army as a "legitimate force" and once declared: "The British government is a murder machine."

Now, as chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, King is staging hearings on ""Muslim radicalization" aimed at exposing what he calls a "violent enemy from overseas . . . which is recruiting people from a community living in our country."

William Grigg details King's hypocrisy much better than I can in this meager post (see here).

Let's put this whole thing in its proper perspective. King isn't seeking a solution to radical Islam. King is seeking to stoke the fires of intolerance in order to fuel the war machine.

In my opinion it is King who should be subjected to hearings and jailed for his support of a terrorist organization. Let us not forget that the IRA was blowing innocent men, women, and children to smithereens long before Al Qaeda existed. Peter King has the blood of those innocents on his hands. It is the height of absurdity that this terrorist-supporting thug can hold hearings of this nature.

And yet, so-called "conservatives" are all gung-ho for the hearings and stand foursquare behind King. Last night on the drive home, I heard Spencer Hughes of Fox News Radio defending the hearings. He actually uttered this ridiculous line, "If you're Islamic and you're not involved in terrorist activities, you have nothing to be afraid of." Uh huh. Just like the innocents in Waco who didn't shoot at the ATF had nothing to be afraid of.

I'm becoming more convinced every day that the vast majority of "conservatives" are complete morons dancing to whatever tune Fox News is currently playing. In that aspect, they're every bit as dangerous to the survival of this country as the radical Left they so despise.

And just as stupid.

The wisdom of Fred Reed

Fred Reed is a favorite of mine. He's half blind. He's powered by Padre Kino, which, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is a Mexican wine. And he's among the most insightful people on the planet.

Fred's latest column has a description of our government, taxes, and the law, that I don't think can be topped.

What happens is that a government needs money, typically to do badly what it shouldn’t be doing in the first place, so Congress passes tax laws. These may at first inadvertently be simple, comprehensible, and tolerably light. Then the unscrupulous, and bureaucrats, who would be unscrupulous if they had the intelligence, discover that it is easier to have the government drain money from the people and give it to the sharpers than it is to work for a living. Taxes grow heavier to feed the growing number of trough-feeders.

The people who actually pay the taxes grow weary of playing udder to innumerable ticks and invent ingenious ways to avoid the taxation. Each new dodge inspires Congress to pass a new and more complex law to prevent people from keeping their money. Humans are ingenious when they feel someone else’s hand in their pockets. Thus regulations grow like kudzu on a Georgia road cut until you have three hundred shelf-feet of impenetrable law that no one understands, even the government. This is good for the ticks because when law metamorphoses into mysticism, the shifty can find loopholes. Meanwhile every special interest on the planet bribes Congress, which amounts to an inexplicably exalted garage-sale, to pass laws exempting the special interest. The result is an unworkable thicket infested with vipers, leeches, and hag fish. Hello.

There you have it. I can't think of a more apt description of the MCF that is Washington than Fred's vivid description.

But it's his last couple of paragraphs that put the exclamation mark on it.

These bureaucracies, like gunch plugging a coronary artery, like filth occluding a drain, get thicker and denser with time. The problems they were supposed to solve go away, but the bureaucrats remain, and hire more equally pointless crats so they can feel important, and the forms we have to fill multiply, and the administrative burden grows, and money and business leave the country.

More cosmetic bureaucracies spring up. We now have TSA, which couldn’t catch cholera in a sewage outfall in Mumbai, but it has a huge payroll and a degree of corruption that would make the sewage outfall a cause for nostalgia. And it will never go away. Nothing does in government.

I figure that what we need is to tear the whole sorry system down and see what comes next. The best hope is that a patriot will learn how to impel some unused interplanetary object, Phobos or Deimos or Ganymede maybe, into Washington at ninety percent of the speed of light. This would eliminate the teachers unions, the Pentagon, AIPAC, Fox News, Langley, the Washington Post, lobbies, and my mother-in-law. Cockroaches would doubtless survive, that being what they do best, and evolve into a civilization less degraded than ours, briefly.

Amen, brother. Amen.

Let the punishment fit the crime

There are numerous - far too numerous - cases where the punishment flat out doesn't fit the crime. Murderers who get 8 years. The guy who sells a bag of weed with just over an ounce in it gets 15 years.

But this is clearly a case where the proposed punishment is more than appropriate.

Lawmakers and residents engaged in heated debate Tuesday over a bill that would make random airport security pat-downs and body scans criminal in New Hampshire.

The bill (HB628-FN) "makes the touching or viewing with a technological device of a person’s breasts or genitals by a government security agent without probable cause a sexual assault," according to the introductory text of the bill.

"Let's put their name on the sex offender registry, and maybe that will tell them New Hampshire means business," said bill co-sponsor Rep. Andrew Manuse, R-Derry.

"That is a crime in this state, and we should charge them every single time," said bill co-sponsor Rep. George Lambert, R-Litchfield.

Yes! Let's brand those TSSA* perverts with the scarlet 'S' for 'sex offender'! Let's make sure that those trolls understand that "No means no"!


* You can't abbreviate Schutzstaffel without the double 'S'