Category Archives: Politics – international

The single greatest teaching moment in the history of the global warming fraud

Posted on by
Reply

This is a crisis that we cannot let go to waste. At long last, a bunch of global warming cranks have put their money where their mouths were and went off to prove, in a practical way, just how much global warming has harmed the environment. And instead of finding the cove where Douglas Mawson had landed a century ago ice free and easy to navigate, they are now stuck in ice and with some luck may end up spending the next twelve months pondering their stupidity, half the time in total darkness.

This is a massive embarrassment for the global warming industry. This is an undeniable failure to use their scientific knowledge in a practical way. They have, instead, demonstrated that global warming is a fraud, with no useful insights into anything. They know nothing whatsoever about anything in relation to the actual climate on the planet earth. They have a single theory that has been tested and failed on one scale after another but on they persist, inflicting billions in costs upon the rest of us.

Chris Turney and his band of fools must become one of the major moments in the history of this debate. This is not an event that can be allowed to fade into the background, to disappear the moment these clowns are finally on dry land again. This has to become the great teaching moment where it is recognised that those who peddle global warming are idiots, absolute fools. Speaking on behalf of global warming should mark someone as naive and ignorant.

How to do this must be a major part of the thought processes that go into thinking these questions through. To christurney must become a verb meaning to believe global warming is true in a suicidal way.

UPDATE: My letter to Scott Johnson at Powerline. I sent him this post from Andrew Bolt which he put up on the Powerline Picks. I have now written to Scott again with the following note:

Dear Scott

I am very pleased to see you have put that up on your “picks” list because this is a story that needs to get around. My worry is that we here in Australia are too provincial to have an effect on any major part of the debate; if this had happened in relation to some Italian academic, say, it would have almost no impact here or I imagine anywhere else. We see it for what it is because we live here and understand our own turf quite well. Yet the great interest is that an actual climate sciences academic from one of our more important universities decided to demonstrate the impact of climate change, and has now done so but in a way that shows the opposite of what he intended to prove. We don’t often get such clear cut demonstrations of just how off the planet the global warming crowd is which is why this is a moment that should be seized on if we can.

Douglas Mawson sailed there at the end of 1913. The intent a hundred years later was to demonstrate how much easier it would be this time because of all the warming that had gone on but instead, found it not only impossible, but they are now embedded in an ice floe that may keep them there for a year if things go really bad. But like with everything else about the news today, it’s not really a story until it is not just carried but harped on by the ABNBCBS. That, I’m afraid, is not going to happen. But we can but try.

Kind regards

Steve

The world does ever so slowly change, sometimes for the better

Posted on by
Reply

A story that overlaps culture, politics and the movies. It’s about someone named Patrick Millsaps, the man who was Newt Gingrich’s campaign chief of staff. This is the story how he has become the agent for this very brave movie star, Stacey Dash, who took an enormous amount of flak because, although black, she came out in public for Mitt Romney during the election. The Romney campaign wasted the opportunity to have her speak on their behalf, and thereby hangs a tale.

After the election and Romney’s loss, Millsaps wrote Dash a letter. He found her agent’s name online and put pen to paper, explaining that he’d had a unique experience as Gingrich’s chief of staff and said if she ever wanted to get more involved in politics to let him know.

He never expected a response. But Dash emailed Millsaps and said thanks. Not long after, Millsaps was headed to Los Angeles for a Republican National Committee meeting, emailed Dash and asked to go to lunch and offered to take her to the RNC meeting.

At lunch, not at the Chateau or the Ivy or some other famous celebrity spot, the two met at a nondescript Italian restaurant and talked for hours.

They kept in touch. Finally, Dash wanted to fire her agent but didn’t want to do it herself. She asked Millsaps to do it. In L.A. for business, he agreed.

It’s a great story and I really like them both.

Pier review

Posted on by
Reply

Piers Morgan is one of the more obnoxious commentators on CNN and that takes some doing. He took over from Larry King and his usual lefty rants from the grandstand, typically against every right-side target he can find, has helped the network cascade downwards in its ratings.

But for once he thought he’d show them how it was done by facing six balls from Brett Lee. On top of everything else, it is a reminder of just how good the really good really are. I’m happy to see this is all over the net but they probably won’t see much of it in the US since the game is so foreign in that part of the world.

It’s only a shame we don’t do eight ball overs any more.

Castro on entrepreneurship

Posted on by
Reply

Cuba is one of my favourite tests to see if someone is an economic or political moron. If you do not think that Cuba is one of the low points on the planet, you qualify. So a bit of news worth repeating:

President Raul Castro issued a stern warning to entrepreneurs pushing the boundaries of Cuba’s economic reform, telling parliament on Saturday that ‘those pressuring us to move faster are moving us toward failure.’

Castro has legalized small-scale, private businesses in nearly 200 fields since 2010, but has issued tighter regulations on businesses seen as going too far or competing excessively with state enterprises. In recent months, the government has banned the resale of imported hardware and clothing and cracked down on unlicensed private videogame and movie salons.

It’s not as if everyone on the island is unaware of how much they have to endure. But for anyone in the rest of the world who thinks of Cuba as anything other than a sewer, they are as cruel in their political beliefs as anyone who has ever walked the earth.

Dutch treat

Posted on by
Reply

When you’ve run out of other people’s money, things begin to change, specially when those other people are running out of money themselves. This is the new mood of welfare reform in Holland:

The Dutch have just announced a massive reform of their welfare system, designed to reduce dependency and put a new emphasis on work. For example, welfare applicants will now be required to prove that they spent at least 4 weeks actively searching for a job before they become eligible for any assistance. And once they begin to receive benefits they will either have to work or perform volunteer community service. Dutch welfare recipients would be required to take available jobs even if they had to move or commute up to three hours per day. . . .

Other reforms would reduce benefits by treating families as a single unit, rather than as separate individuals. For instance a mother with two children would receive a single payment rather than three separate payments. The combined payment would be less, based on the assumption of ‘shared expense.’

According to the Dutch government, the reforms will ensure that welfare is seen as ‘a safety net, rather than a right.’

He’s depressed. Well he should be and why should anyone care?

Posted on by
Reply

obama depressed

What are we to make of this, from Fox even: Greta van Susteren blasts Obama’s press conference: ‘You just want to slit your throat almost, it was so depressing’. This is how the story starts:

Fox News host Greta van Susteren expressed dismay Sunday over President Barack Obama’s performance at a Friday press conference, calling it ‘pathetic.’

‘You just want to slit your throat almost, because it was so depressing,’ she declared.

Susteren visited ABC’s ‘This Week’ to comment on the White House’s latest Obamacare rule change released earlier this week. But what started as a conversation on the healthcare law’s prospects soon turned into an attack on Obama’s messaging.

President Screwup is finding that people don’t like what he’s done. I am astonished that the disgust with him and his party has gotten through to him but if it has then that’s something. But if you are looking for pathetic, try this on for size:

‘The president’s most powerful weapon as president is his ability to inspire — that’s his greatest strength,’ Susteren began. ‘And then he comes out last Friday in the press conference. He was depressing, he was pathetic, he sucked the oxygen out of the room. The media beat up on him, the media had bad questions, they kept punching him. I mean, he ends the year where you just want to slit your throat almost, because it was so depressing. He’s completely lost his ability to inspire.’

The president’s most powerful weapon as president is his ability to get various measures enacted into law and to take other actions as needs be. Obama’s problems is that as an executive and leader he is as bad as anyone has ever been, totally unfit for the job he has. Susteren’s comments are so stupid that this woman should be shown the door and sent to work for the ABC.

UPDATE: You might wish to supplement the above with the views of Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit who wrote about Obama’s Average Year. The averaging comes from an old Soviet joke which he quotes:

Ivan: So how was your day?

Boris: Average.

Ivan: What do you mean, average?

Boris: Worse than yesterday, better than tomorrow. So, average.

Which side are you on?

Posted on by
Reply

duck and pajamas

It’s a weird world when the ideal male is the one displayed in the Obamacare ads. The head of the dynasty was already a TV personality back in Louisiana doing a hunting and fishing show when he and his family were tapped to star in the Duck Dynasty series. The Obamacare chap was a left wing political activist.

Compare and contrast. And for what it’s worth, the following is a straight up ad for Obamacare which is discussed here.

UPDATE: This is from Mark Steyn in a brief but clearly angry post that should be read in full. His title is Re-Education Camp and directs his aim at the editor of National Review:

I am sorry my editor at NR does not grasp the stakes. Indeed, he seems inclined to ‘normalize’ what GLAAD is doing. But, if he truly finds my ‘derogatory language’ offensive, I’d rather he just indefinitely suspend me than twist himself into a soggy pretzel of ambivalent inertia trying to avoid the central point — that a society where lives are ruined over an aside because some identity-group don decides it must be so is ugly and profoundly illiberal. As to his kind but belated and conditional pledge to join me on the barricades, I had enough of that level of passionate support up in Canada to know that, when the call to arms comes, there will always be some ‘derogatory’ or ‘puerile’ expression that it will be more important to tut over. So thanks for the offer, but I don’t think you’d be much use, would you?

You’ll need full Marx on this exam

Posted on by
Reply

People in positions of power do not like to be criticised. The only people who want the absolute right to criticise governments are the people who are subject to the laws, rules and regulations that are put in place by governments since as often as not – possibly more often – those on the receiving end of these laws, rules and regulations do not like either what is being proposed or has been done.

The following story is therefore of no little interest. It is reprinted in its entirety from The China Daily Chinese journalists face Marxist ideology exam so the news hasn’t exactly been suppressed. And in case you don’t get the message, this is the subhead for the story, “Exam to be based on 700-page manual that prohibits published reports from featuring comments that go against party line”. The story in its entirety follows below:

Chinese journalists will have to pass a new ideology exam early next year to keep their press cards, in what reporters say is another example of the ruling Communist party’s increasing control over the media under President Xi Jinping.

It is the first time reporters have been required to take such a test en masse, state media have said. The exam will be based on a 700-page manual peppered with directives such as ‘it is absolutely not permitted for published reports to feature any comments that go against the party line’, and ‘the relationship between the party and the news media is one of leader and the led’.

Some reporters say the impact of the increased control in the past year has been chilling. ‘The tightening is very obvious in newspapers that have an impact on public opinion,’ a journalist at a current affairs magazine said. ‘These days there are lots of things they aren’t allowed to report.’

China has also intensified efforts to curb the work of foreign news organisations. The New York Times Company and Bloomberg News have not been given new journalist visas for more than a year after they published stories about the wealth of relatives of the former premier Wen Jiabao and Xi.

On Thursday, China’s foreign ministry granted Bloomberg journalists and some New York Times reporters press accreditation, allowing them to proceed with visa applications.

‘We hope this development means the New York Times reporters still awaiting their press cards will be given them soon, and all the reporters whose visa procedure is still under way will be issued with 2014 residence visas,’ said Peter Ford, president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, said in a statement.

The General Administration of Press and Publication, a key media regulator, has said via state media that the aim of the exam and accompanying training is to ‘increase the overall quality of China’s journalists and encourage them to establish socialism as their core system of values’. It did not respond to questions from Reuters about the exam or press freedom in China.

Traditionally, Chinese state media have been the key vehicle for party propaganda. But reforms over the past decade that have allowed greater media commercialisation and limited increases in editorial independence, combined with the rise of social media, have weakened government control, according to academics.

Even within the party, interpretations of the media’s ideal role in Chinese society vary. ‘Supervision by the press is conducive not only to the struggle against corruption, but also to social progress,’ said Yu Keping, deputy president of the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau(CCTB), on Thursday at the Caixin Summit, a high-profile gathering of politics and economics experts organised by an influential Chinese magazine. The bureau is responsible for ‘translating and researching classical Marxist works’, according to the official webpage china.org.cn.

‘There are preconditions for the press to make contributions to social progress,’ he added. ‘One is independence – the press should not be attached to powerful organisations.’

Yet China media watchers point to a flurry of editorials after Xi spoke to propaganda officials in August as evidence of concern within the party that control over public discourse was slipping. The official Beijing Daily described the party’s struggle to win hearts and minds as a ‘fight to the death’.

Some reporters and academics, however, trace the start of the tougher attitude to a strike lasting several days in January by journalists at an outspoken newspaper, the Southern Weekly, after censors scrapped a new year editorial calling for China to enshrine constitutional rights. Xi had taken over the Communist party only several weeks earlier.

‘This was a shock to Xi Jinping’s leadership [circle],’ said Xiao Qiang, a China media expert at the University of California at Berkeley. ‘They own these newspapers. That makes it an internal, public rebellion, which made the censorship and media control mechanism look really bad.’

The strike ended after local propaganda officials promised to take a lighter hand with censorship. Some senior reporters have since left the paper, according to two sources. The Southern Weekly declined to comment.

Journalists will have to undertake a minimum 18 hours of training on topics including Marxist news values and socialism with Chinese characteristics, as well as journalism ethics, before sitting the exam in January or February. Reporters who fail the test will have to resit the exam and undergo the training again. It is not clear what happens to reporters who refuse to take it.

In theory, all reporters in China need a press card to report, although Zhan Jiang, a journalism professor at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, said many did without one. Zhan said recent scandals in the Chinese media had raised some questions about the industry’s professionalism.

A reporter for the New Express tabloid in Guangzhou was arrested in October after confessing on state television to accepting bribes for fabricating more than a dozen stories about Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science and Technology Co Ltd in Changsha. The reporter wrote that Zoomlion had engaged in sales fraud and exaggerated its profits, accusations strongly denied by the state-owned construction equipment maker.

‘It’s hard to say if this is really to improve the actions of journalists or to control them. You don’t know what [the authorities] are thinking,’ Zhan said.

Reporters had little doubt about the aim of the exam. ‘The purpose of this kind of control is just to wear you down, to make you feel like political control is inescapable,’ said a reporter for a newspaper in the booming southern city of Guangzhou.