BigT’s Roundup - Late Night Edition (9-15-07)

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BigT’s Roundup - Late Night Edition (9-15-07)

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U.S. elections are around the corner. And there are voters who are not
persuaded by the analysis of Ambassador Crocker, or those of American
newsmen. And this is of course the final branch of government: the
voters. The critical questions in the halls of Congress: Will they
understand if you do? And if you don’t?

If the vote were mine, I’d say: Stick it out. You can’t, by doing so, be accused of thoughtlessness, certainly not of perfidy.

From William F. Buckley

It is known that Mr. Buckley has been the steward of the
conservative movement for decades now and it is also known that he is
not a fan of the war in Iraq. What is important here is that he
realizes what everyone else needs to understand. Leaving Iraq to the
Islamists will create a much worse situation for everyone. They will
have a base of operations that is far more useful than Afghanistan was.

The war in Iraq is no longer about whether it was the correct move
to start it or not but should only be about trying to win it. We are
not in a death struggle with radical Islam yet. If they get control of
Iraq and spread their influence like a metastasizing cancer over the
Middle East and elsewhere then we will have a very grave situation
indeed.

Rudy runs a political ad against MoveOn and gets a discount!

Here is the conservative’s propaganda answer to Al Gore’s propaganda via Planet Gore on National Review Online.
It is an interesting booklet of climate facts. Of course no one will
believe it because it shows that global temperature rises come before
CO2 increases. It also tells us that we are at the tail end of a 10,000
year warming period that is going to transition to 100,000 years of
ice. Another horrific piece of propaganda in this booklet is the boring
fact that humans are only responsible for 0.28% of the greenhouse
effect and 3.4% of annual CO2 emissions.

Here is an interesting article from News Busters about how food stamps
are enough if you shop right. I guess some politicians wanted to make
some political hay by alleging no one could live off of the paltry
amount of food that food stamps provides. Many tried and failed
(probably without trying all that hard just to make their point) but
one couple succeeded marvelously. They did it for six months, didn’t
lose any weight, and actually came in under budget with leftovers.

In a story by Robert Guttman at the Huffington Post
we learn exactly why liberals so love Ron Paul. Is it that he is
anti-war? A non-interventionist? He’s crazier then them? Nope, here it
is:

Rep. Paul is causing a stir in the 2008 presidential
race and he is raising money. His chances of winning the Republican
nomination are nil but perhaps with his strong and vocal group of
supporters he might run as an Independent candidate in 2008 although he
says he will not.

His old-fashioned views which he says are “Old, Old Right positions
of the 1950s” are attracting a crowd of supporters that run the
spectrum from liberal Democrats to anti-war Independents to people who
just like his honesty and anti-intervention views.

Maybe, just maybe, for Christmas even (if you believe in that Santa Claus guy) he will run as an independent.

And another story from HuffPo by Chris McGowan says that if we move towards biofuel from Brazil we will kill that biosphere.

These days, when you fill up your car with a
gasoline-and-ethanol blend, you are probably burning ethyl alcohol made
from American corn. A few years from now, your commute may be powered
by ethanol from sugar cane grown in Brazil’s cerrado, a biodiversity
hotspot that is the largest savanna in South America and disappearing
at a faster rate than the Amazon. You may be hastening the demise of
the world’s largest rain forest as well. And you won’t be alone: AOL
founder Steve Case, film producer Steven Bing, supermarket magnate Ron
Burkle, global financier George Soros, and other well-known investors
(see below) could end up playing leading roles in Brazilian
deforestation. Case and his colleagues are banking on Brazilian
biofuel. They may be hoping to make a green investment that will help
save the world, or they may just want to get a piece of the next gold
rush. But they probably don’t understand the importance of the cerrado,
or the possible environmental consequences of their actions.

Maybe the best form of energy we have that is clean and can be
produced in large enough volumes to make a difference is nuclear power.
But we don’t have that in America, do we. If only we knew why? Oh, here
it is. According to the guys who wrote Freakonomics the reason why we
are in such a perilous energy situation is because of Jane Fonda.

In their blog The Jane Fonda Effect
they claim that her propaganda (my word not theirs) film The China
Syndrome prevented Americans from enjoying cheaper and cleaner energy.
By exploiting the Three Mile Island incident they were able to
basically halt the production of new nuclear plants. And at about 60%
of the cost of coal and much cleaner (not to mention less people die at
nuclear power plants then in coal mines) who would want an energy
source that other developed countries use a lot more than us? ME!

In an innocuously titled story: Ancient Records Help Test Climate Changes we get incontrovertible truth that the world is warming! Well duh, little ice age anyone? But the best part of the story is right here:

“We know from Josef Dietrich that the extremes were very
big during his time. There were very cold winters and very mild
winters, very wet summers and very dry summers,” he says, adding that
the range of weather extremes has been smaller in the 40 years he has
recorded data for the Swiss national weather service.

In there own story we find that weather is less hectic then it was
back then (Dietrich is the author of those “ancient records”).

And finally two great posts from the Counterterrorism Blog. One has to deal with why would al Qaeda Iraq offer tons of money to kill someone in Sweden when they have nothing to do with the War on Terror. And the other one deals with the question of why we aren’t as safe as we could be. Hint: look leftward. That’s all Folks. BigT