Author: Moe_Lane

If you are an industrialist who contributed to Democrats… [UPDATED]

…here is your reward:

WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded greenhouse gases are endangering people’s health and must be regulated, signaling that the Obama administration is prepared to contain global warming without congressional action if necessary.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson scheduled a news conference for later Monday to announce the so-called endangerment finding, officials told The Associated Press, speaking privately because the announcement had not been made.

And by ‘reward’ I mean of course ‘betrayal.’  The intention here is to use the EPA to impose by executive fiat what the Senate has sensibly refused to do by legislative action: use the Clean Air Act to shut down businesses that they don’t like.  And, given that the dislike is based on religious grounds – and much, much, much worse; the people with the religious objections don’t see themselves as being religious – forget about trying to compromise.  The ‘compromise’ is that the industrialists don’t go to jail, a monastery, or the gibbet*.

In short: elections have consequences.  Here, have some.

Moe Lane

(H/T: AoSHQ)

*Obviously, being burned at the stake isn’t really carbon-neutral.

Crossposted to RedState.

[UPDATE]: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) summed up my reaction to this pretty nicely:

“With double-digit unemployment and over 3.5 million jobs already lost this year, the administration inexplicably continues to push for a job-killing national energy tax—either through legislation or regulation.”

2012 primary reorganization feature, not bug.

Not to contradict Glenn Reynolds, but this report of the Democrats going ahead with plans to make it impossible for an upstart into do in 2012 what Senator Obama did to Senator Clinton in 2008 won’t offend President Obama at all.  The President is the incumbent now, after all: he doesn’t want superdelegates and spaced-out primaries (and probably caucuses, soon enough) interfering with his inexorable progression through the nomination process.  That’s what I concluded back in June, and I see nothing here that would encourage me to change my opinion.

Shorter Moe Lane:  Hi, I’d like you to meet the new boss.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Shorter Max Baucus (D, MT).

“You can get a federal appointment for a little bit of something that you’re having on the side; but it’s unethical to get one for an actual girlfriend.”

See also The Volokh Conspiracy.  I should also point out that a competent Washington press corps might have deigned to notice the fact that Baucus treats ‘sleep with me’ as a job requirement earlier than just after his re-election.  Oh, yes: there’s a history.

Crossposted to RedState.

Book of the Week: ‘Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates’

Yeah, I know: but Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates: Using Philosophy (and Jokes!) to Explore Life, Death, the Afterlife, and Everything in Between was something that I had grabbed for my wife to pass the time while waiting for midwife appointments, mostly because of the cover art.  I’m reading it now, on the thumbs-up that my wife gave it: it is in fact pretty funny so far.

And so, it being Sunday, we replace Take Back Your Government  with it.

So what do we call this? The ‘Warm War?’

Sorry about all the AGW stuff, but it was a slow weekend and I’m still recovering from the shock of realization that yea, indeed, the universe let me become a father again. Clearly the end times are upon us.

Anyway, there is some suggestion that the Russians are behind the recent embarrassing Climategate data dump:

Suspicions were growing last night that Russian security services were behind the leaking of the notorious British ‘Climategate’ emails which threaten to undermine tomorrow’s Copenhagen global warming summit.

An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has discovered that the explosive hacked emails from the University of East Anglia were leaked via a small web server in the formerly closed city of Tomsk in Siberia.

(Via JammieWearingFool) Specifically, the Russian FSB, which is of course the successor organization to the KGB. You know: the organization that Vladimir Putin used to run.  And if you’re wondering why a slightly institutionally paranoid nation-state that’s a major producer of fossil fuels might be interested in publishing compromising materials involving groups trying to cut fossil fuel production… well, read that again until you work it out.

On the bright side, maybe this will encourage Democrats to start pushing back on (unrelated) Russian attempts to aggrandize themselves at our expense.  It could happen: Ted Kennedy is dead, after all.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

*One* tree.

They hung absolutely critical long-term policy positions on the results of one freaking tree.

At the forefront of those who found suspicious the graphs based on tree rings from the Yamal peninsula in Siberia was [Canadian statistician Steve] McIntyre himself, not least because for years the CRU refused to disclose the data used to construct them. This breached a basic rule of scientific procedure. But last summer the Royal Society insisted on the rule being obeyed, and two months ago Briffa accordingly published on his website some of the data McIntyre had been after.

This was startling enough, as McIntyre demonstrated in an explosive series of posts on his Climate Audit blog, because it showed that the CRU studies were based on cherry-picking hundreds of Siberian samples only to leave those that showed the picture that was wanted. Other studies based on similar data had clearly shown the Medieval Warm Period as hotter than today. Indeed only the evidence from one tree, YADO61, seemed to show a “hockey stick” pattern, and it was this, in light of the extraordinary reverence given to the CRU’s studies, which led McIntyre to dub it “the most influential tree in the world”.

Via Protein Wisdom. At this point, I have to start wondering whether I should be showing these people the same reluctant respect that I would any really successful grifter. Except, of course, that regular devotees of the Spanish Prisoner con are not attempting to rewrite the tax code to keep taking my money.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

The non-AGW non-snows of Kilimanjaro.

Oops.

Professor Sinninghe Damste’s research, as discussed on the site of the Dutch Organization of Scientific Research (DOSR) — a governmental body — shows that the icecap of Kilimanjaro was not the result of cold air but of large amounts of precipitation which fell at the beginning of the Holocene period, about 11,000 years ago.

The melting and freezing of moisture on top of Kilimanjaro appears to be part of  “a natural process of dry and wet periods.” The present melting is not the result of “environmental damage caused by man.”

Guess that Al Gore’s going to come up with a new talking point – HA! I kid, I kid. He’ll ignore it completely, of course. Doesn’t fit the religious orthodoxy.  It’s too good an iconic image for proselytizing efforts.  Can’t confuse the faithful, no?

[pause]

Eppur e’ meno umido.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

The answer, by the way, is ‘No.’

I’ve been trying to avoid the whole wretched Tiger Woods affair, but Dr. Helen asked this question a couple of days ago:

So my question to this proponent of violence against men is this: Given that women’s marital infidelity is approaching that of men (who are catting around just like Tiger), should their husbands feel free to take the tool of his wife’s trade and smash in her car and perhaps her face?

…in response to some since-hastily-updated commentary by Jessica Ashley on the subject of domestic violence.  Ms. Ashley would like everybody to know that it’s OK to use improvised weaponry to scare your partner and break his or her stuff, just as long as you don’t actually hit him or her…

Hey, take it up with Jessica Ashley, not me.  I was taught by a ruthless, oppressive patriarchal system not to hit women.  Which is probably saying all sorts of regressive and prejudiced things of me, but then again: I don’t hit women.

Moe Lane