Hard Times, Courtesy Of The Greenies

Water that used to flow from California's delta southward to irrigate the nation's breadbasket fields of the San Joaquin Valley, and on to slake our thirsts in SoCal, now stays in the delta, thanks to the Center for Biological Depravity's ... uh, Diversity's ... lawsuits to protect the Delta smelt fish.

When stuff like this happens, it causes what is generally referred to as "results." For starters, the California Department of Water allocation is now at 35 percent of normal, down from the routine 50 percent of normal, which is, as you probably guessed, half of what people would like to get.

And that has its own results. From the Bakersfield Californian:

Faced with too little rain and restricted pumping to protect an endangered fish, farmers and ranchers in and around Kern County are facing tough choices. In a typical year, 850,000 acres are irrigated, according to the Kern County Water Agency.

This year, about 45,000 of them will be idle at a cost of $46 million. In addition, 100,000 acres will be “underirrigated,” causing a $59 million loss.

“It’s a catastrophic crisis of historic proportions,” the agency’s general manager, Jim Beck, told the Kern County Board of Supervisors Tuesday before the board passed a resolution declaring “a potential disaster condition exists throughout Kern County.” ...

Rancher Kenneth Twisselman is worried. He works on Temblor Ranch in western Kern County, raising cattle on 50,000 acres. ...

Twisselman declined to divulge specific numbers, but said the drought forced the ranch to halve its herds from last year by slaughter or relocating them to pasture in Oregon or further north in the state.

“We have very few cattle, and very little grass,” he said. “And of course a lot of the corn has gone to ethanol, not feed lots.”

That translates as higher food costs, brought to you by the Greenies. Add it to the higher fuel costs, also brought to you by the Greenies (who are responsible for that portion of higher costs attributable to low domestic production and shortage of refining capacity), and higher housing costs (in CA between one-quarter and one-third of the cost of a home is its regulatory burden).

It seems a key platform of the Greenies is for us to have less green in our wallets ... and on our fields.

Sunday Scan

No Fireworks In Gualala

A couple weeks back, I wrote about a particularly worrisome matter of the Cal. Coastal Commission issuing a cease and desist order against a 4th of July fireworks show planned in the No. Cal town of Gualala. It is, I think, the foothold the Coastal Commission has been seeking in a larger effort to stop these patriotic displays all along the California Coast.

How crazy is that? This crazy: One of the Gualala Gaeans said in a comment on the post that the damage of a 15 minute fireworks show would be permanent and unmitigatable. My gosh, if the earth were really that fragile, if would have dissolved into dust long ago.

The Gualala Patriots Day Committee (the good guys) appealed the decision and lost, so there will be no fireworks show this year. But the fight goes on; the judge merely failed to overturn the cease and desist; he did not rule on the underlaying matter. Says the Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing the Patriots Day group:

“The legal fight goes on against this abuse of power by the California Coastal Commission. Although the fireworks won’t happen this year, our lawsuit goes forward. We’ll be litigating to bring the fireworks back in future years – and to have the courts instruct the Coastal Commission on the proper limits of its power.”

For a PLF summary on the case, click here.

The Inevitable In Zimbabwe

The despotic leaders of the multitude of thug-ocracies of the world can breathe a sigh of relief -- the popular uprising against their role model hero, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, has been crushed.

This was a close one, with Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change actually winning a popular election. But Mugabe froze the election results and started a campaign of intimidation ... which may be too faint a word. Remember what Mugabe's supporters did to the wife of Patson Chipiro, a MDC regional leader?

They grabbed Mrs Chipiro and chopped off one of her hands and both her feet. Then they threw her into her hut, locked the door and threw a petrol bomb through the window. (BBC)

Preceding the MDC announcement it was not going to participate in the new election was this, also from BBC:

On Sunday, the MDC was due to stage a rally in Harare - the highlight of the campaign.

But supporters of Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF occupied the stadium venue and roads leading up to it.

Witnesses reported seeing hundreds of youths around the venue wielding sticks, some chanting slogans, and others circling the stadium crammed onto the backs of trucks.

Some set upon opposition activists, leaving a number badly injured, the MDC said.

It said African election monitors were also chased away from the rally site.

Sounds like exactly the sort of election Jimmy Carter would deem to be fair.

Another Reason To Vote For McCain

Buried deep in a WaPo story on hate groups and rising racism that's very short on stats and figures and verrrry loooong on opinion, we find this:

"One person put it this way: Obama for president paves the way for David Duke as president," said Duke, who ran for president in 1988, received less than 1 percent of the vote and has since spent much of his time in Europe. "This is finally going to make whites begin to realize it's a necessity to stick up for their own heritage, and that's going to make them turn to people like me. We're the next logical step."

Keep Duke in Europe! Vote McCain!

Alternative Energy Dreamin'

There's another horse in the alternative energy race ... but this one seems unlikely to generate even one horsepower. But what the heck! Don't stop believin', hold on to that feelin':

Scientists from Europe’s Atomic Energy Commission, in Grenoble, France, have shown that vibrations from raindrops landing on a certain type of plastic can generate enough energy to operate some low-power wireless sensors, like battery-powered outdoor thermometers.

Leonardo diCaprio, take note!

Plenty Magazine offers an "In Depth" feature on the new technology, gushing about how it could be used to power climate sensing devices that now need batteries, so that we get a continuous flow of data to feed into the electricity sucking beasts we call computers.

Of course, rain drop power comes with that bane of all alternative energy: a dearth of economic viability. It takes Penty to the last paragraph to mention this tidbit: The material used to generate raindrop power costs $460 for 1 kilogram, and given the milliwatts produced, a bunch of kilograms will be required. Batteries, on the other hand, cost a buck.

Undaunted, the article ends:

Who knows, April showers may soon bring power.

Of course, not enough power to offset the solar power that's not being generated due to the rain.

Very nice art: Josh Cochran

Extreme Climate Change

NOAA (named, perhaps, for that ark chap, since the oceans are going to flood us all) has released its newest climate change report, Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate. The resulting bad reporting can perhaps be best summarized by two quick cuts.

First, the pocket liner set got their first impression of the report from this Science Digest intro:

Among the major findings reported in this assessment are that droughts, heavy downpours, excessive heat, and intense hurricanes are likely to become more commonplace as humans continue to increase the atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

While the mainstream tuned into this Digg summary ...

New report highlights the likely changes in extreme weather and climate conditions under ongoing climate change.

... which in turn generated comments like:

Report: Turning on lamp will light up room.
Report: Pissing into wind will get you wet.
Report: Falling linked to failure to stand upright.

How many of these stories do we need to read before people start seeing this as completely obvious?!

Well, of course, it's just not that obvious. ICECAP gives us this summary by Roger Pielke Jr., who just happens to believe in anthropogenic global warming:

The report contains several remarkable conclusions, that somehow did not seem to make it into the official press release. They include: over the long-term U.S. hurricane landfalls have been declining, nationwide there have been no long-term increases in drought, despite increases in some measures of precipitation, there have not been corresponding increases in peak streamflows, there have been no observed changes in the occurrence of tornadoes or thunderstorms, there have been no long-term increases in strong East Coast winter storms (ECWS), called Nor’easters, there are no long-term trends in either heat waves or cold spells, though there are trends within shorter time periods in the overall record.

Pshaw. What's the fun in reporting boring ol' stuff like that?

Seismic Mitigation As Art

This amazing piece of industrial art is actually the tuned mass damper at the top of Taipei 101, for now the planet's tallest completed skyscraper.

The 728-ton steel ball is so massive it couldn't be lifted into location; rather, it had to be assembled in a cavern carved out of four stories at the top of the tower. Why, you might well ask, put a 728-ton ball at the top of the building?

The simple answer is that Taipei 101 stands just 800 feet from an earthquake fault. More specific: The ball swings counter to motion caused by wind or earth movement, dampening sway.

Deputy Dog, an architecture blog, has a short story on the mass damper, but what really attracts is the video that was shot on May 12, when shocks from China's massive earthquake hit the tower. Tourists in the building actually flocked up to the viewing area for the damper to see it in action.



Don't you just love human ingenuity?

Can You Say "Semper Cheese?"


If you don't understand this, says Blackfive, you've never met a Marine.

Sunday Scan

Thanks, Mates!

As expected, Australian PM Kevin Rudd, who won his seat following promises to bring Aussie troops home from Iraq, has ended combat operations so withdrawal can begin. The Aussies were stationed in the south, particularly around Nasiriyah, which has seen its share of violence.

Troops held a ceremony Sunday that included lowering the Australian flag from its position and raising the American flag instead over Camp Terendak in the southern Iraq city of Nasiriyah.

"We have to praise the role of the Australian troops in stabilizing the security situation in the province through their checkpoints on the outskirts of the city," said Aziz Kadim Alway, the governor of the Dhi Qar province. (AP)

Like the dependable ally they are, the Aussies aren't just pulling up and running home. Several hundred other troops will remain in Iraq in security and liaison roles, and Australia will leave behind two maritime surveillance aircraft and a warship to help patrol oil platforms in the Gulf.

There were no Digger fatalities during their five-year deployment. Six were injured, one seriously.

One Man, One-Half Vote

Dumb Democrats. The party that railed so vociferously about citizens deprived of votes in 2000 and 2004 has decided voters in Michigan and Florida, who had nothing to do with when their primaries were held, are only half-human. And many Dems are PO'd, as this clip demonstrates:



The agreement, termed "politically astute" by Walter Shapiro in Salon, is anything but. It won't end the acrimony, as the Clinton camp is talking lawsuits and supporters are threatening to sit out the election. Worse, it avoided the simpler, more politically astute solution: Seating all the delegates and punishing the state party leadership. All the delegates should have been seated (delegates of departed candidates could have been redistributed mathematically), and the to states' parties' leaders could have been dinged any number of ways: monetary fines, stripping of leadership roles, whatever.

The Dems punished the wrong people: The People. The Hacks should have been punished. But the Hacks are for Obama this year, so the party of the people threw the people overboard. The DNC and Obama deserve all the rancor and defections the agreement generates.

George Will Calls For Carbon Tax

I normally would rail against a conservative calling for a tax -- especially a tax to stop global warming, which we know at the outset will fail to accomplish its goal. But in this case, Will's got a point that's worth making: Given a choice between a black hole into which money will be poured for no purpose (the Lieberman-Warner global warming bill, which will be debated in the Senate this week) and a clear, visible and straightforward tax on carbon fuels, the latter is more preferable by far.

Could we have neither, please? Maybe, but given the great excuse global warming provides government to increase its power and tax its citizens, I thought I'd present the crux of Will's argument:

With cap-and-trade, government would create a right for itself -- an extraordinarily lucrative right to ration Americans' exercise of their traditional rights.

Businesses with unused emission allowances could sell their surpluses to businesses that exceed their allowances. The more expensive and constraining the allowances, the more money government would gain.

If carbon emissions are the planetary menace that the political class suddenly says they are, why not a straightforward tax on fossil fuels based on each fuel's carbon content? This would have none of the enormous administrative costs of the baroque cap-and-trade regime. And a carbon tax would avoid the uncertainties inseparable from cap-and-trade's government allocation of emission permits sector by sector, industry by industry. So a carbon tax would be a clear and candid incentive to adopt energy-saving and carbon-minimizing technologies. That is the problem.

A carbon tax would be too clear and candid for political comfort. It would clearly be what cap-and-trade deviously is, a tax, but one with a known cost. Therefore, taxpayers would demand a commensurate reduction of other taxes. Cap-and-trade -- government auctioning permits for businesses to continue to do business -- is a huge tax hidden in a bureaucratic labyrinth of opaque permit transactions.

Cap and trade is often presented as a free market solution. It is anything but. Citizens concerned about the fragile economy and the failure of government to reduce spending should regale their Senators with letters and calls opposing the bill. For me and other Californians, our useless Barbara Boxer has already come out in strong support of the bill. Natch.

Could The Iranians By Lying?

Lying Iranians?! Say it isn't so! Those who oppose harsh action against Iran's nuclear program stand ready to believe that Iran is pursuing nukes for purely peaceful energy-producing reasons. Then why this?

Iran Building 7 Refineries to Hike Capacity

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran is constructing seven refineries in an effort to boost its crude and gas refining capacity by more than 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd), a senior oil official said Saturday.

"The construction of seven refineries has started with the investment of 15 billion euros ($23.22 billion)," MNA quoted Aminollah Eskandari, a director of the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC) as saying.

"About 1.56 million barrels will be added to the country's capacity to refine crude oil and gas derivatives," he added.

Investing $23 billion of an economically depressed nation's revenues in power plants it wouldn't need if it had a nuclear power grid seems even madder than what we've come to expect from the Tehraniacs.

Too Little, Too Late

Barack Obama has left Trinity United -- one month after Rev. Wright accused the prez wannabe of distancing himself from his true beliefs for political reasons and a week after Michael Pflegar exhibited some of the most flagrant racism in recent time from the Trinity pulpit. Here's his typically over-long and elegant statement:



In it, Obama blames the media for what's happened:

But it's clear that now that I'm a candidate for president, every times something is said in the church by anyone associated with Trinity, including guest pastors, the remarks will be imputed to me, even if they totally conflict with my long-held views, statements and principles.

He accuses news organizations of harassing members, which is warranted because pack journalism is an ugly thing. It took them a long time to wake up to Rev. Wright, but now that they're awake, there's no moderating them.

Obama said he's leaving the church in part to protect the parishioners from the media onslaught -- "That's just not how people should have to operate in their church." -- but he never says anything about protecting the American people from the crazy, racist, hate that is the stuff of sermons at Trinity.

He has "separated" himself from those teachings, but he has never sufficiently condemned Wright and his teachings for what they are: racist hatemongers.

Water, Water, Not All Around

The other CSM writes (via Environmental News) about water as the next oil, and they've got it half-right. We can survive without oil, but not without water -- so a massive water shortage will bring suffering, war and death.

Cyprus will ferry water from Greece this summer. Australian cities are buying water from that nation’s farmers and building desalination plants. Thirsty China plans to divert Himalayan water. And 18 million southern Californians are bracing for their first water-rationing in years.

Water, Dow Chemical Chairman Andrew Liveris told the World Economic Forum in February, “is the oil of this century.” Developed nations have taken cheap, abundant fresh water largely for granted. Now global population growth, pollution, and climate change are shaping a new view of water as “blue gold.”

Socialists are taking note:

“We’re at a transition point where fundamental decisions need to be made by societies about how this basic human need — water — is going to be provided,” says Christopher Kilian, clean-water program director for the Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation. “The profit motive and basic human need [for water] are just inherently in conflict.”

Some readers might be surprised that I agree with the socialists on this one. In 1995 we helped preserve a local, public water district fight off a take-over attempt by a private water company. Our research on that case showed that private water companies charged more than public agencies and didn't invest as much in infrastructure.

Plus, public agencies are better suited to fight off challenges from whacked-out environmentalists, who continue to attack new water infrastructure projects despite mounting evidence of the need to address global water shortages.

Polar Bear Fight: Round 2

The polar bear won't receive unneeded, economically devastating protection without a fight, as litigants are lining up to challenge the Bush Admin's latest cave-in to the radical environmental agenda.

We Republicans used to fight against Statism, working diligently to keep federal over-reach at bay. There were a dozen ways the Bush Dept. of Interior could have denied the environmentalists' ploy to seize control of America's economy through the Endangered Species Act, but they folded. With no true Republicans left in Washington, it's come to this: Alaska and private enterprise are stepping in where the lost GOP fears to tread.

First, Alaska via AP:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - The state of Alaska will sue to challenge the recent listing of polar bears as a threatened species, Gov. Sarah Palin announced Wednesday.

I like Palin more and more. Too bad McCain's not inviting her to Sadona.

She and other Alaska elected officials fear a listing will cripple oil and gas development in prime polar bear habitat off the state's northern and northwestern coasts.

Palin argued that there is not enough evidence to support a listing. Polar bears are well-managed and their population has dramatically increased over 30 years as a result of conservation, she said.

On the private sector side, I got this email today from the Pacific Legal Foundation, one of the nation's leading champions of property rights:

PLF WILL FIGHT POLAR BEAR LISTING THAT THREATENS TO CHILL THE ECONOMY

Crushing, economy-wrecking regulation in the name of “global warming.” Is that what the future holds for the United States? Not if Pacific Legal Foundation can help it.

The first big, dangerous step toward oppressive global warming restrictions on economic activity—and personal liberty—came last week. Federal officials bowed to environmentalist pressure and put polar bears on the Endangered Species Act list.

Pacific Legal Foundation is swinging into action to fight this move. We are immediately ready to file the 60-day notice that is required for litigation involving the ESA.

Yes, you do have to give the federal government 60 days' notice that you intend to sue. It would be nice if they'd extend the same courtesy to mere citizens.

Why? Because the listing is wrong—scientifically and legally. And it can be used as a tool by enviro-radicals to curtail vast amounts of productive activity, throughout the country.

The Polar Bear Isn’t In Peril

There simply isn’t verifiable evidence that polar bears are in danger. Quite the contrary. As an editorial in Investors Business Daily reported last week, polar bear numbers “are actually growing. There might be as many as 25,000, and probably no fewer than 22,000, today, while 50 years ago, there were somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000.”

The newspaper went on to quote PLF Principal Attorney Reed Hopper: “ ‘Never before has a thriving species been listed under the Endangered Species Act, nor should it,’ said [Hopper]... . Hopper also notes another reason the listing was unwarranted: The polar bear has already survived two global warming eras that were as hot or hotter than the anticipated coming climate change.”

The government is following questionable computer models that project shrinking ice floes—but ice has been shrinking for a couple of decades already, yet polar bears are increasing!

Meanwhile, the government of Canada—where more polar bears reside—says they’re not threatened. Indeed, the polar bear is already among the most protected species in the world.

They go on to quote the same economic arguments against the listing (not that economic arguments hold any weight in species listings; they don't). They also got this juicy quote from the Center for Biological Depravity:

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, which petitioned to list the polar bear, a listing could subject “all U.S. industries” emitting greenhouse gases to the “purview of the Endangered Species Act.”

To channel Johnny Cochran: "You're up to your ears in s*** if you emit."

I wrote a check to PLF today to help them with their lawsuit. Won't you, too? Here's their donate page.

Quote Of The Day: Green God Edition

Whether it's adopted the trappings of religion or not, my biggest beef with environmentalism is how comfortably irrational it is. It touts ritual over reality, symbolism over substance, while claiming to be so much more rational and scientific than those silly sky-God worshipers and deranged oil addicts.
-- Jonah Greenburg

Jonah Goldburg's LAT column today, The Church of Green, is spot-on and full of quotable material for use in your next verbal joust with a hard-core Greenie.

At the core of the column is the simple truth that one can be a conservationist without being an environmentalist, and that the world would be a better place with fewer of the latter and more of the former.

Conservation, which shares roots and meaning with conservatism, stands athwart this mass hysteria. Yes, conservationism can have a religious element to it as well, but that element stems from the biblical injunction to be a good steward of the Earth, rather than a worshiper of it. But stewardship involves economics, not mysticism.

Economics is the study of choosing between competing goods. Environmentalists view economics as the enemy because cost-benefit analysis is thoroughly unromantic. [Bjorn] Lomborg is a heretic because he treats natural-world challenges like economic ones, seeking to spend money where it will maximize good, not just good feelings among environmentalists.

Many self-described environmentalists are in fact conservationists. But the environmental movement wins battles by blurring this distinction, arguing that all lovers of nature must follow their lead. At the same time, many people open to conservationist arguments, like hunters, are turned off by even reasonable efforts because they do not want to give aid and comfort to "wackos."

The environmentalists may be winning, Goldburg says, but there's still time to save the environment from the environmentalists.

Do give him a read.

Sunday Scan

Lessons In New Politics From Barack

Barack Obama is leaving the old politics behind, supplanting it with a new, cleaner style that leaves the smarminess behind. Here, courtesy of The LA Times (which provides a darn good compendium of Obama-smashing news, in its usual blatant favoritism for Hillary objective style), is a tutorial in how Obama approaches politics the new, clean way:

1. Need money after your first unsuccessful campaign for Congress? Then get a sweet job from a big campaign supporter to supplement your state senate income. (Obama got a $112,000 job from Robert Blackwell Jr., about double his state senate salary of $58,000.)
   
   
2. In return for the favor, urge the state legislature to grant a Blackwell company, table tennis promoter Killerspin, a $50,000 tourism grant. (Pingpong tourism is such an important tourist market, and so deserving of state subsidies!) ((Shall we make, or avoid, the devilishly clever connection between the name "Killerspin" and the Obama PR machine?))
   
   
3. Then, to show that a cash-stuffed paper bag the system really does work, land $320,000 in state subsidies for Killerspin tournaments.
   
   
4. Finally, get new political contributions from Blackwell as soon as the grants go through.

There are business people who feel it is their responsibility to run a profitable company, and there are business people who feel it is the people's responsibility to make their company profitable. There are politicians who believe in the former, and politicians like Obama who, despite all their fine talk about new ways of doing things, definitely believe in the latter.

Islamist Horror Stories

Bubba, of What Bubba Knows, has put together a list of stories for Sabine, a gal who apparently doesn't get the threat posed by Islamist thought and action. Here's his intro:

For Sabine's education, today's stories of atrocities by Muslims.

May you come to realize who and what is the real threat to peace, may you learn to recognize the face of the real enemies of your peaceful, tranquil world.

And here are the story links:

¤ Please Let Me Marry Her and Then Kill Me
¤ The criminality against children in the koran
¤ German Charity Helps Turkish Women Escape Forced Marriages
¤ Europe or Eurabia?
¤ Home-grown 'champion of Islam'
¤ Saudi women 'kept in childhood'
¤ Not Child's Play: The Teddy-Bear Intifada

The first link one tells of a particularly heartless murder carried out by an al-Qaeda in Iraq thug, who is now in prison, awaiting his death sentence. Another prisoner wanted to identify the thug's victim:

So, he asked the killer to give him the name of the victim.

The killer replied he didn’t know, he asked from what tribe? The killer didn’t know, he asked from what sect? The killer didn’t know, he asked him from what province? The killer didn’t know.

Then he asked him, then why you killed him? The killer said he cannot remember, whether it was the victim's haircut or the way he was dressed or the music pouring from his car.

This is the enemy we're fighting, and this is why we're fighting this enemy. Islamist terrorists are the vilest villains we have ever fought, a fact the Left is quick to forget, despite unforgettable stories like this one.

Lessons In Environmental Hypocrisy

If you like the splendor and quiet, hot solitude of the desert, Anza Borrego is your state park. It's the state's largest park, stretching across most of eastern San Diego County almost all the way to the Mexican border, with 500 miles of dirt roads, 12 separate wilderness areas and untold miles of hiking trails.

Somewhere in that vastness, a long line of wooden power poles stretches from horizon to horizon, lost in the vastness, hardly noticed by most park visitors. Call the power lines the Maginot Line of the war between the Greenies and the rest of us.

San Diego Gas & Electric, in order to meet a state mandate that 20% of its power come from alternative sources by 2010 (that's less than two years away!), proposes to convert the current power corridor to a new Sunrise Powerlink, which would carry renewable power from the sun, wind and geothermal facilities to be built in the Imperial Valley.

The environmentalists, who demand that we stop using oil and go with renewable resources, are furious, of course. Here's Elizabeth Goldstein, prez of the California Parks Foundation, quoted in the LA Times:

"The idea that we're going to sacrifice critical pieces of our environment to protect other pieces of our environment seems a little ironic. That's an irony I cannot accept. We have to find a way to do both."

I think she means "protect both," not "sacrifice both," but the sentence's structure is a little hazy. The Sierra Club makes it more clear, talking about a "powerline juggernaut:"

Fare thee well, big skies and open vistas. To feed the energy demands of the West's inland megalopolises and crowded coasts, public lands in 11 Western states may soon be crisscrossed by a web of power lines and pipelines. These "energy easements," up to three-quarters of a mile wide, are slated for every sort of public property: national forests, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) holdings, state parks, even national parks. Since they'll be "preapproved," the easements will be ready to go at the energy companies' convenience.

Note that they don't say a word about these easements being required to comply with the alternative energy mandates they themselves demanded. So like a Kennedy attacking windmills, they attack the infrastructure required to make their alternative energy dream come true.

But you see, having 20% alternative energy isn't their dream, not if it means conventional power solutions. They wanted growth to stop, grids to be ripped out, and Americans to change the way they live. Nothing less will do.

So they will fight this power line, even though there really isn't a good alternative route. They would rather condemn private land than use public land for a public use. And the public, I hope, will see the Greenies for what they are: Demanding and totally inflexible, demanding the world without giving up a square inch, and self-righteous but thoroughly hypocritical.

Happy? Earth Day

I remember the first Earth Day back in the 70s, when we worried about the imminent risk to the earth caused by pollution. Now, nearly four decades later, we are supposedly still worried about the imminent risk to the earth caused by pollution.

The pollution has changed; the worry has not, even though it's clear there are lessons to be learned from year after year of hysteria: The earth works on its own long cycles, not our headline-grabbing short cycles; the earth is a lot more resilient than Greenie fundraisers would like you to believe, and finally, Greenies have gotten more successful at promoting environmental hysteria.

The evidence for each of the three is self-evident and needs no further explanation here. Instead, I'd like to praise the Greenies for a moment.

Don't get me wrong; I'm no fan, primarily because from top to bottom, the movement knowingly sensationalizes and distorts for self-benefit, which appalls me since I believe public discourse requires the level playing field truth provides. Worse, their solution is always larger government. They are anti-capitalist, anti-corporate and completely untrusting in the character of man, trusting instead in the fumbling, power-corrupted auspices of government.

Yes, capitalism lead the world into the industrial revolution and pollution, but government went along with it and in time communism proved itself far more capable of blindly destroying natural resources than capitalism. The Greenies have forgiven government and big social programs, but have never forgiven capitalism, even though today it is the leading force that's creating the technologies that are taking us away from our polluting past.

But I still praise the Greenies because at their core they are conservationists, as am I. Conservationism is a biblical concept rooted in God's decree that we be stewards of his creation, and it holds as true today as it did with Adam and Eve. So while I make a living fighting environmentalists who try to stop new homes and infrastructure, and think their positions in these battles are untenable and do not represent stewardship, I look at the results of the fights and am not too upset at all.

My firm has been involved in programs that have set aside over 350 square miles of open space in return for development rights. That's more open space conservation than any environmental group has accomplished, as far as I know. Today, I'm working on one project that will preserve 1,600 of its 3,000 acres, another that will build on just under 12,000 acres and preserve just over 12,000, and a third that will permanently protect 21,000 acres, building on just 5,000 acres.

And the built environments within these projects are becoming quite green. Extra work is done to give more houses south-facing orientations for active and passive solar, and Energy Star appliances are required. Recycled water is used to irrigate lawns and parks, and low-flow fixtures are mandatory. Transit is given high priority, and walkability is incorporated in the design to reduce vehicle miles traveled and improve quality of life.

These are dramatic changes from the old model of subdivisions as far as the eye can see, and it's come about for two reasons: regulation and marketing.

The Greenies celebrate regulation on Earth Day and call for more, but there's more than enough, at least here in the USA. Land is preserved to protect endangered species, streams, oaks and rare plants. Carbon footprints are reduced to comply with new laws and regs.

But more important, consumers are starting to prefer green communities and are willing to pay a bit more to have open space nearby and energy efficiency everywhere they look.

So this Earth Day, my prayer is that we get down to earth and celebrate the fact that we're doing enough. There's no need for more political grandstanding on Greenie causes; the balance has been struck in America, and if anything, it favors the earth more than the people who live on it.

Now we are in a position where the free market can take over, working within the regulatory process, and create communities that take care of human needs while stewarding the resources God gave us.

Some related reading:

• For the whacked-out MSM view calling for a complete retooling of the economy a la WWII to tilt at windmills fight global warming, read this essay in Time.
  
  
• For a counterpoint, read this essay by Dennis Prager, who says, "It is much easier to fight global warming than to fight human evil."
  
  
• For a much more logical approach than Time's, in which we apply technology to conserve, rather than appease the hysterics, see this essay by Glenn Reynolds in the NY Post.
  

hat-tip for links to Real Clear Politics

Sunday Scan

Happy Passover

Passover started with the Sabbath yesterday, so my best wishes to all my Jewish friends on this remarkable and holy holiday.

And my thanks to Ask.com for illustrating its home page this morning with the artwork above. And what about Google? Nothing of course. Why do they so fear religion? Ask has honored religion for as long as I've used it, and so far, the Secularists have not rebelled against it.

Neither has God's wrath poured down on Google, but I know that if the Googleites were living in Egypt back in the times of Passover, a plague would fall upon it.

Giving Greenies The Sack

Knee-jerk central -- that's the Bay Area, home of ill-thought out political actions and decisions made on the emotion of the moment, like last year's action by Oakland to ban plastic bags in retail stores with annual sales of $1 million or more.

Nexis sent me to a June 2007 SF Wrongicle article heralding the passage of the ban:

Under the measure sponsored by Councilwomen Nancy Nadel and Jean Quan, any retailer grossing more than $1 million a year would be banned from using the nonbiodegradable plastic bags. Nadel said that 10 percent of petroleum is used to create plastic so that reducing the use of bags will help the environment in multiple ways.

"Californians use 19 billion plastic disposable bags each year, and throw away 600 every second," Nadel said. "These bags are made from oil, so reducing their use will serve the mission of the 'Oil Independent Oakland by 2020' " task force established last year.

Them's some mighty fine knee-jerk stats. But now, as a judge temporarily suspends the order, we find that once again environmentalists are fueled more by emotion than fact. Here's the Oakland Trib:

A Superior Court judge issued a tentative ruling Thursday placing an injunction on Oakland's plastic-bag ban, saying the city should have more adequately studied the environmental impact of the ban before passing it into law.

Judge Frank Roesch's ruling came after a plastic-bag industry group called the Coalition to Support Plastic Bag Recycling sued Oakland last summer shortly after the City Council approved a ban on single-use plastic bags at retail stores doing more than $1 million a year in business. The judge heard arguments in the case in January.

The ban was billed as an environmentally friendly ordinance. But at the crux of the case was a question on whether the increased use of paper bags could harm the environment as well.

Paper bags take more energy to create and fill up more landfill space, the plastic-bag industry argued.

"The court ... finds that substantial evidence in the record supports at least a fair argument that single-use paper bags are more damaging than single-use plastic bags," Roesch wrote.

To go on with their ban, the Oakland City Council would now have to authorize a full-blown Environmental Impact Report to study the environmental effects of the ban -- at a cost of at last $100,000 in a down economy. It is quite possible the knee-jerkers will win, and $100,000 that could be used for something useful will be sacrificed on to the Greenie Gods.

A High Rate Of Cynicism

The always-interesting Stats delivered this a.m.:

The three-
component Maslach Burnout Inventory-
General Survey was implemented to examine burnout among newspaper journalists (N = 770). With a moderate rate of exhaustion, a high rate of cynicism and a moderate rate of professional efficacy, burnout among journalists demonstrate higher rates of burnout than previous work. Additionally, journalists expressing intentions to leave the profession (n = 173) demonstrated high rates of exhaustion and cynicism, and moderate rates of professional efficacy, making them “at-risk” for burnout. (Read more)

Sounds like me when I left journalism ... except that my "high rate of cynicism" was directed at how cynical my editors and colleagues were, not at the world in general.

What's illuminating here is that the burned-out journalists don't leave to become fig growers or car salesmen; they just keep reporting, delivering us news through a cynical, exhausted filter.

Sequestered Carbon News

Kudos to the Bush Admin for keeping Warmie hysteria in check during international talks that are a precursor to the next big UN global warming inititives.

There are plenty of nations there that want to set a goal of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, including the EU nations, Japan and Canada (which most any way you slice it would benefit from global warming). But the US is only "seriously considering" the goal under Bush, and by refusing to endorse it, effectively is preventing the establishment of such a destructive goal.

Meanwhile, buried 12 paragraphs deep in the Reuters story was this:

France said that South Africa presented studies suggesting it would cost the world up to $200 billion a year to curb greenhouse gases and between $30 and $60 billion a year to adapt to effects such as droughts or rising seas.

No further discussion merited, apparently -- including no question about why France would bring up the South African study and still support a 50% greenhouse gas reduction target.

China 1: It's Not Just Tibet

China is becoming the global leader in thuggery, not just suppressing freedom in Tibet, but lending its hand to ruthless, blood-soak dictators across the globe.

Here's the latest unsurprising update, from The (UK) Independent:

Chinese troops have been seen on the streets of Zimbabwe's third largest city, Mutare, according to local witnesses. They were seen patrolling with Zimbabwean soldiers before and during Tuesday's ill-fated general strike called by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Earlier, 10 Chinese soldiers armed with pistols checked in at the city's Holiday Inn along with 70 Zimbabwean troops.

One eyewitness, who asked not to be named, said: "We've never seen Chinese soldiers in full regalia on our streets before. The entire delegation took 80 rooms from the hotel, 10 for the Chinese and 70 for Zimbabwean soldiers."

So the next time you're all sympatico with some left-wing acquaintance because your positions over China and Tibet align, raise this one: "Have you spoken out against China's involvement in Zimbabwe and Venezuela?" And watch the blank stare.

China 2: Fixing The Weather

One of the biggest challenges facing the Beijing Olympics -- besides cerain human rights issues -- is the weather. Why? Well, here's Beijing weather in a nutshell:

Winter is marked by howling Siberian winds; summer, by sweltering monsoon heat. In lieu of showers, springtime is best known for seasonal dust storms that sweep down from Central Asia. Fall is parched and gusty too, but the dust settles down.

Overlay on all this industrial pollution the likes of which we haven't seen since the English midlands at the peak of the industrial revolution, then factor in the 50% chance of rain expected for the opening ceremonies, and you get the picture.

China is responding by stepping up its long-term, large-scale (52,998 employees) programs of industrial weather alteration. It's a troubling, wild, 5-clicker of a story at Plenty that makes a good Sunday read.

China 3: Wei, Way Out

Blogger secret revealed: I sometimes right about stuff I don't understand at all. Like the work of Chinese artist Li Wei (should we give him a little leeway?), which is described at Hemmy.net as as:

Chinese artist Li Wei from Beijing started off his performance series ‘Mirroring’ and later on took off attention with his ‘Falls’ series which shows the artist with his head and chest embedded into the ground. His work is a mixture of performance art and photography that creates illusions of a sometimes dangerous reality. Li Wei states that these images are not computer montages and works with the help of props such as mirror, metal wires, scaffolding and acrobatics.

Got that? Not a computer montage, just some props, mirrors, wires and acrobatics. Then how do you explain this:



More images here.

Blinded By Global Warming

I'm surprised we haven't heard more about the provable link between global warming and blindness, because cases of it are cropping up more and more. Like this poor, pathetic fool, calling for an email campaign against an American history book:

"American Government", 11th edition is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and approved for use in high school Advanced Placement courses in the United States. On page 559, the textbook's authors write that "it is a foolish politician who today opposes environmentalism. And that creates a problem, because not all environmental issues are equally deserving of support. Take the case of global warming. (..) On the one hand, a warmer globe will cause sea levels to rise, threatening coastal communities; on the other hand, greater warmth will make it easier and cheaper to grow crops and avoid high heating bills."

Whether or not global warming is a proven scientific fact, I can not imagine what a simplistic mind would even think of putting this in a student's text book.

Whatever effects we feel from global warming, if we ever do, will be simplistic ones. A hotter summer. A drier year. A smaller beach. And a lower heating bill. (Of course, we'll also get a higher AC bill.) The simplistic mind belongs to the blind blogger.

Are we not supposed to teach our children to think rationally about problems, to see both sides, to study causality and solutions? Or are we supposed to teach them to think the worst and accept only no solution or draconian solutions?

Friends of the Earth is calling for an email campaign against the book, citing the passage the blind blogger cited above, along with this "offensive" passage:

"The earth has become warmer, but is this mostly the result of natural climate changes, or is it heavily influenced by humans putting greenhouse gases into the air?"

And this one:

"But many other problems are much less clear-cut. Science doesn't know how bad the green-house effect is."

You see, the debate must be over. No questions allowed. The book must be banned! Says Friends of the Earth:

Please join us in writing Houghton Mifflin right now! We will copy your governor to make sure every state is aware of the problem with this textbook.

Kudos to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for encouraging thought, and shame on Friends of the Earth, which is calling for -- what else? -- an email campaign designed to remove the book from classrooms. That action is the modern equivalent of book-burning and note well who's doing it.

You can counter the Warmie fanatics by writing your letter in support of the book and emailing it to communications@hmco.com. Here's mine; feel free to lift it:

Subject line: Support for "American Government" text

It has come to my attention that Friends of the Earth has launched an email campaign against American Government because it includes such passages as, "The earth has become warmer, but is this mostly the result of natural climate changes, or is it heavily influenced by humans putting greenhouse gases into the air?"

I support school books that encourage students to think about problems rather than blindly accept one radical position or another, so I support American Government on this matter and encourage Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to not be deterred by the Friends of the Earth campaign, which is nothing short of a modern-day book-burning.

Bush's Global Warming Moves: Legacy-Hunt Or Smart Stuff?

What in the world is President Bush doing talking about a greenhouse gas initiative after so bravely standing up against the alarmists for so long? Is it legacy-hunting? Tony Blankley, writing in Real Clear Politics, thinks so:

The last months of a presidential administration are often dangerous.
Presidents -- looking to their legacies -- go to desperate lengths to try to
enhance their reputations for posterity. A pungent example of such practices by the Bush administration was reported above the fold on the front page of The Washington Times Monday: "Bush prepares global warming initiative."

Oh, dear. Just as an increasing number of scientists are finding their
courage to speak out against the global warming alarmists and just as a building body of evidence and theories challenge the key elements of the human-centric carbon-based global warming theories, George W. Bush takes this moment to say, in effect: "We are all global alarmists now."

He's got it wrong. Bush is instead taking a moment to say, "We're outnumbered, circle the wagons, and let's try to get out of this mess with as little long-term damage as possible." Or, as Kenny Rogers would say, "You gotta know when to fold them."

Here's the current lay of the land. You've got attorneys general, state and federal judges, state and federal regulators, state legislatures, Congress, the Supreme Court, the Administration and special interests from Earth First! to the automakers, all focused on global warming, all running willy-nilly, nearly all embracing controls, and a few trying to contain the hysteria.

The WSJ agrees with my view:

Environmentalists and other groups already have gained ground without
comprehensive emissions legislation. They have successfully pushed lawsuits and
regulatory actions that would use the Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act and
National Environmental Policy Act to address the problem of global warming.

Bush looked at this picture and decided not to leave it for the next guy. He has not announced any plans to set any kind of limits; rather, he will attempt to establish a framework that will contain damage to the economy while addressing human greenhouse gas emissions. Again, the WSJ:

The White House fears a regulatory train wreck that could create a bewildering and costly set of rules affecting not just major emitters but office buildings and schools.

I was involved in a mirror-reverse situation at the outset of the Clinton Administration in 1992. The California gnatcatcher, a small song bird, was under consideration for an endangered species listing and the deadline for the decision was just 30 days after Clinton took office. Our efforts with the first Bush administration were going nowhere and we were looking at a $13 billion impact on the housing industry in SoCal.

Clinton was elected with the environmental vote, just as Bush enjoys the support of industry today. But he also had campaigned against an "economic train wreck" on environmental issues, and we were able to convince him and his Interior Secretary, Bruce Babbitt, that the gnatcatcher was his trainwreck.

Eager to avoid such a meltdown in the first months of his term, Clinton allowed Babbitt to be flexible, and we succeeded in getting a "threatened" listing rather than "endangered," which opened the door to more liberal regulatory processes, basically saving both the gnatcatcher and the SoCal economy. And throughout his term, the Greenies still loved Clinton.

The same idea is in play here. Bush appears to be going away from a core constituency -- industrialists -- and towards the enemy, but in fact he is trying to stop the trainwreck and realizes that counter-intuitive actions are needed.

This is why recent news that 61 percent of historians rank Bush's presidency as the worst is ridiculous and premature. The greatness, or great failure, of a president doesn't become evident until the years after he leaves office, and Bush's action today on global warming is just one more reason why I hold out hope that he'll go down as a much better than average prez, once the dust and greenhouse gas settles.

Sophie's Choice For Greenies

Nature can be such a cruel master:

Salmon-eating sea lions authorized to be slain

PORTLAND, Ore. -- State and fedeal officials say they have done all they can to stop protected California sea lions from munching on threatened salmon at teh base of the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River, using pyrotechnics, beanbag rounds fired from shotguns and traps.

But the sea lions, who arrive each spring at the base of the dam for the spring chinook working their way upriver to spawn, have pretty much given them [the humans, not the salmon] the flipper.

So on Tuesday, the government authorized Oregon and Washington to kill the
worst offenders, listing about 60, identifiable by branding, scars or other markings, for "immediate removal."

"Immediate removal" is a euphanism for "kill the #$@%!&," as in "al-Qaeda ordered the immediate removal of occupants of the World Trade Center."

The article is delightful since it highlights the sort of conunbrum the Greenies pile onto themselves because of their meddling ways. But it is also troubling on so many levels, being indicative of a thick green stripe running through journalism today, and of the belief that humans are no better than animals. From the top:

• In paragraph one, the use of pyrotechnics, bean bags etc., is symbolic of the environmentalists' hypocrisy: They tell us to keep our hands off the earth, but they think they have a right to put their righteous hands all over it in order to manage it. In truth, if they would just let the sea lions eat, eventually there wouldn't be enough salmon left and the sea lions would move on. Enough salmon would get through and the population would come back.
  
• In paragraph two, I was extremely miffed by this: "But the sea lions, who arrive each spring ...." Why would that bug me? Simple. "Who" is reserved for humans (and perhaps pets); the correct usage here is "which." It's a typical mistake in today's Greenie world,
  in which animals are placed on a par with humans as just a fellow sentient being. Any good editor would have caught this; apparently there are no good editors left.
  
• And finally, in paragraph three, did you share my consternation at "worst offenders?" Says who? What laws of nature are the sea lions offending? None. They are not offenders of natural law, worse or otherwise. Have we agreed to make animals subject to human laws, so these sea lions are offenders under the Endangered Species Act? Are we to believe that the sea lions are capable of making moral judgment about eating salmon? How many threatened salmon are OK? How many would make them "offenders?"

That little two-and-a-half inch story in today's Fresno Bee packed quite a wallop. Sorry; I couldn't find a link in the paper's on-line edition. You'll just have to take it on faith -- and don't worry, unlike sea lions, I can make moral judgments, so I wouldn't lie to you.

Quote Of The Day: Enviro's Albatross Edition

“The Government is irresponsible to jump on a bandwagon that has no base in scientific evidence. This is one of many examples where you get bad science leading to bad decisions which are counter-productive."
-- Lord Taverne

Unfortunately, Lord Taverne is not talking about government's full-blown buying of global warming hysteria, the the story of what set Taverne off is illustrative of the power the Greenie/MSM alliance wields. Here's the story (London Times via Greenie Watch):

Scientists and environmentalists have attacked a global campaign to ban plastic bags which they say is based on flawed science and exaggerated claims.

The widely stated accusation that the bags kill 100,000 animals and a million seabirds every year are false, experts have told The Times. They pose only a minimal threat to most marine species, including seals, whales, dolphins and seabirds.

Here comes the paragraph on how stupid Lefty politicians are when it comes to Green Hype:

Gordon Brown announced last month that he would force supermarkets to charge for the bags, saying that they were “one of the most visible symbols of environmental waste”. Retailers and some pressure groups, including the Campaign to Protect Rural England, threw their support behind him.

Buy why?

But scientists, politicians and marine experts attacked the Government for joining a “bandwagon” based on poor science. ...

Campaigners say that plastic bags pollute coastlines and waterways, killing or injuring birds and livestock on land and, in the oceans, destroying vast numbers of seabirds, seals, turtles and whales. However, The Times has established that there is no scientific evidence to show that the bags pose any direct threat to marine mammals.

They “don’t figure” in the majority of cases where animals die from marine debris, said David Laist, the author of a seminal 1997 study on the subject. Most deaths were caused when creatures became caught up in waste produce. “Plastic bags don’t figure in entanglement,” he said. “The main culprits are fishing gear, ropes, lines and strapping bands. Most mammals are too big to get caught up in a plastic bag.”

He added: “The impact of bags on whales, dolphins, porpoises and seals ranges from nil for most species to very minor for perhaps a few species. For birds, plastic bags are not a problem either.”

You've heard the stat about the gazillions of species that go extinct each year (here's the myth ... here's the reality), or how many square miles of Brazilian rainforest disappears in the blink of an eye (here's a story that says it's disappearing at a rate of 9,000 square miles a year, and here's one that says the rate is 55,000 square miles a year).

Here's the key behind all of these fatalistic overstatements:

The central claim of campaigners is that the bags kill more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds every year. However, this figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags.

Some environmental group on a fund-raising binge seized on the study, misstated it (honest mistake or deliberate manipulation?)and spread the word ... and the MSM, which loses all journalistic integrity and fawns over every word from the Greenies and "environmental scientists," can be counted on to spread it ... so teachers can pass it along to our next generation ... and politicians can "solve" the problem by imposing regulations and raising our cost of living.

And it just keeps happening and happening, again and again.

Sunday Scan

Bringing Honor Back To "Monica"

Here's a story out of Afghanistan that would be completely wonderful, were it not for the five wounded US soldiers that are central to it:

CAMP SALERNO, Afghanistan (AP) - A 19-year-old medic from Texas will become the first woman in Afghanistan and only the second female soldier since World War II to receive the Silver Star, the nation's third-highest medal for valor.

Army Spc. Monica Lin Brown saved the lives of fellow soldiers after a roadside bomb tore through a convoy of Humvees in the eastern Paktia province in April 2007, the military said.

After the explosion, which wounded five soldiers in her unit, Brown ran through insurgent gunfire and used her body to shield wounded comrades as mortars fell less than 100 yards away, the military said.

"I did not really think about anything except for getting the guys to a safer location and getting them taken care of and getting them out of there," Brown told The Associated Press on Saturday at a U.S. base in the eastern province of Khost. ...

Brown, of the 4th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, said ammunition going off inside the burning Humvee was sending shrapnel in all directions. She said they were sitting in a dangerous spot.

"So we dragged them for 100 or 200 meters, got them away from the Humvee a little bit," she said. "I was in a kind of a robot-mode, did not think about much but getting the guys taken care of."

For Brown, who knew all five wounded soldiers, it became a race to get them all to a safer location. Eventually, they moved the wounded some 500 yards away and treated them on site before putting them on a helicopter for evacuation.

"I did not really have time to be scared," Brown said. "Running back to the vehicle, I was nervous (since) I did not know how badly the guys were injured. That was scary."

The military said Brown's "bravery, unselfish actions and medical aid rendered under fire saved the lives of her comrades and represents the finest traditions of heroism in combat."

Can you imagine having that maturity, esprit de corps and selflessness at the age of 19? I just asked that of Incredible Daughter #2, who happens to be 19, and she just shook her head and said, "That's crazy."

It does take a little crazy to be a good soldier, and five guys in her unit and all of America have a very good, and a little crazy, soldier to thank this morning for her valor.

Name The Fanatical Motivation

What motivated these fanatics? I had the answer five words into this story ... but had to read 18 paragraphs before BBC provided just a hint:

Suspected militants arrested in western China earlier this year were planning attacks on the Beijing Olympics, a Chinese official says.

Two people were reported to have been killed and 15 arrested in a raid on 27 January in Urumqi, Xinjiang province.

Officials now say their aim was to attack the August Olympics.

The alleged plot was disclosed as officials also revealed that a plane crew prevented an apparent attempt to crash a jet on an internal flight.

The incident occurred on Friday.

Put "militants" and "Western China" together and what do you have? Islamists! BBC can't bring itself to say that, though. Way down at paragraph 18 and beyond we find:

China has been struggling for years to contain separatist sentiment among the Uighur minority in Xinjiang.

Some Uighurs have campaigned for the mainly Muslim province to become an independent republic.

There it is: "mainly Muslim." And then you can read "separatist" to mean "wanting to set up a Shari'a theocracy."

Not that the media would ever make it that clear.

Gagging On Universal Health Care

A lot of us smell a rat on hearing the Dem-patter on the need for a system of universal health care. "Smell a rat" is just a figure of speech, of course ... [cue the sinister voice] ... or is it?

LONDON (Reuters) - A patient was told there was no reason why he couldn't have surgery in a hospital, despite the smell caused by a dead rodent trapped in the building's ceiling.

Andrew Cowper was due to have an operation at the Queen Elizabeth II hospital in Hertfordshire when staff "were made aware of a dead rodent in the single storey unit's roof space," the hospital said in a statement.

The hospital said its experts concluded that the dead animal was outside the operating theater and posed no risk.

Cowper, 19, who had been waiting 11 months for the unspecified operation, opted out, despite the experts opinion that it was perfectly safe under the rule of England's national health care system to be cut open within feet of a decomposing rodent.

Why I'm Not As Famous As Lileks

You remember Benny Sharon, the drugged-up Hebrew University prof and latter-day Timothy Leary, who recently postulated that Moses (I think that's Moses on the right and Jethro on the left) was stoned when he had a vision of God giving him tablets, and that the real hand-off never occurred. I thought my post on Sharon was pretty clever ... then I read what James Lileks had to say in his Bleat on the subject (with a hat-tip to Jim).

Talk about an effective rebuttal!

I just remembered that I called the Bob Davis show this morning to talk about the new theory re: Moses and the Ten Commandments: dude was high. Apparently a professor somewhere has suggested that the entire experience was the result of a mushroom or some such ceremonial intoxicant. I called to say I didn’t believe it, because if Moses was tripping we wouldn’t have ten commandments. We would have three. The first would make sense, more or less; the second, written half an hour later, would command profound respect for lizards who sit on stones and look at you, because they’re freaking incredible when you think about it, and the third would be gibberish. Never mind the problem of getting the tablets down the mountain – anyone who has experience of watching stoners try to assemble pizza money when the doorbell rings doubts that Moses could have hauled stone tablets all the way down.

After the chuckles (or "grass-giggles" if you will) die down, Lileks gets to The Big Point:

Sure: you cannot call them Commandments without someone doing the Commanding, and once they’re not commandments they lose the moral authority that supercedes the individual precepts. It doesn’t mean they’re not good ideas still; it just means they are one set of ideas in competition with other ideas that found their origin in the rude clay of history.

That, my friends, is why people who so enjoy sinning spend so much time and energy attacking the foundations of religion.

Whaling War Escalates

Paul Watson, a founder of GreenPeace who now has moved on to forcefully impose his anti-human view on others as captain of the anti-whaling ship Sea Shepard, is facing some stiff opposition this time around as Japanese whaling boat captains are standing up to his grandstanding:

Paul Watson, captain of the Sea Shepherd group's protest ship Steve Irwin, said on Friday he was shot, but survived because he was wearing a Kevlar vest.

Japan's fisheries agency said coastguard officials had only thrown "flash grenades," which are used for crowd control and are not regarded as weapons, after activists threw stink bombs on to the Japanese factory ship the Nisshin Maru. (source)

Tit for tat, I'd say.

Previously, the Japanese seized two whale-lovers who boarded a whaler and held them for quite some time, keeping them handcuffed to an outside railing to enjoy the Antarctic weather until an Australian fisheries patrol vessel intervened.

C-SM readers know I grew up in Japan, but you probably don't know that one day when I opened my bag lunch at school, I found that our housekeeper had made me a pineapple and canned whale meat sandwich. Yum ... not.

In my eleven years in Japan, my encounters with whale meat were slim to almost none. The Japanese whaling industry says whaling is cultural to the Japanese -- but whale meat is rarely served and hardly popular.

Still, anyone who stands up to holier-than-thou Watson -- a certifiable jerk-off who, when just 10, shot a kid in the butt to stop him from shooting a bird, and who once said "earthworms are far more valuable than people” -- is a hero in my eyes.

For more on the chief thug of eco-terrorism, read the bio on Activist Cash or this one on Target of Opportunity (a bit of a scary site in its own right). Skip Wikipedia; it's a bunch of bullsh ... propaganda.

Muff Diving?!

Yes, there is a town in Ireland called "Muff," and yes, there is a SCUBA diving shop there named after the town.

That's just one of the bizarre bits of info on European towns I learned on Spiegel's quiz based on the odd nature of European town names. (You're going into the quiz with a one-question advantage, thanks to me!)

If you thought "muff diving" is a bit obscene, just you wait ... it gets much more X-rated than that!

Making Jerry Brown Look Good

It's common knowledge that Cal. AG Jerry Brown is using global warming grandstanding as a stage for a run for the governorship -- Moonbeam II, if you will.

Frightening as that thought is, Brown just became a minor irritant in the scheme of things, as reported by the SF Wrongicle:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is considering a 2010 run for governor - a campaign that would embrace many of the same divisive causes he has championed as mayor, including same-sex marriage, universal health care and protections for illegal immigrants, The Chronicle has learned.

Newsom has long been rumored to be a potential contender in what is likely to be a crowded field of Democrats looking to succeed Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a list that includes Attorney General and former Gov. Jerry Brown, former state Controller Steve Westly and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio ["Grease-Zipper"] Villaraigosa.

In recent months, Newsom has quietly been meeting with Democratic campaign strategists and other supporters to discuss a gubernatorial run, and he is now "certain to at least consider the possibility," said Eric Jaye, a Newsom confidant and political consultant.

When asked whether he was planning to run, Newsom said, "A number of people in the last few months have reached out and talked to me about it."

Could there be better proof of the premise that big fish in small ponds tend to think they can be big fish in big ponds? Can you imagine how Newsome's honoring of a gay porn studio would play in Fresno? How his city's sanctuary city status will play in Orange County and San Diego? And shall we consider the stinking $229 million black pit that is the city's finances?

(If you want a good rundown of the bizarreness of life under Newsome, here's a list of SF-watcher Bookworm's posts on Baghdad by the Bay.)

Bring it on. Let the Dems strut their stuff in the Cal primaries, turning off sane Californians by the multitudes.

Chop-Sticking It To The Greens

The grand chopstick protest is raging throughout China ... well, cropping up here and there in big cities like Beijing, where this protest apparently forced the fast-food noodle chain Noodles Loves Noodles (catchy, eh?) to switch to plastic chopsticks.

According to the WSJ, the Chinese use 63 billion pairs of snap-apart, throw-away wooden chopsticks a year. They're not made from virgin forest trees, but from birch, poplar and bamboo, which grow fast and are not endangered.

The enviros would have them replaced with plastic? Plastic? Made from oil, processed in effluent-leaking, fume-belching factories?

Well, yes. Or, of course, you could follow the approach used by China's BYOC (bring your own chopsticks) activists. Again, WSJ:

B.Y.O.C. is becoming a way of life for young Chinese activists like Margaret Yang, a 28-year-old market researcher for Intel in Beijing. On a recent lunchtime visit to a Beijing branch of the Chinese hot-pot chain Little Sheep, Ms. Yang put her ideals into action. When the waitress approached with a fistful of disposable chopsticks, Ms. Yang flashed her personal chopsticks, sending her scurrying away.

After a lunch of lamb strips, mushrooms and bok choy, Ms. Yang illustrated the cleanup protocol, requesting a cup of hot water from the waitress to rinse her chopsticks in, before slipping them into the organic cotton sack she uses to carry them.

Hat-tipper Jim notes with proper tone:

OK, let's see if I get this straight.

Instead of using some "...roughly 63 billion pairs each year" of disposable chopsticks that are "...typically made from fast-growing woods like birch, poplar and bamboo that are not endangered"..."and often uses leftover wood that is not suitable for other industries", we are going to request 63 billion cups (that's nearly four billion GALLONS, BTW) of HEATED water, instead.

And people wonder why I think that most environmentalists are just plain nuts! HA!

Jim, Jim, Jim. It's green image that matters. Please don't bother Greenies and Warmies with troublesome things like facts and logic.