BigT’s Roundup - Wednesday Ed. (11-14-07)

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BigT’s Roundup - Wednesday Ed. (11-14-07)

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Very few people have any sense of history. They were never taught it
and they never wanted to learn it. This is how we get stories from
places like Variety that exposes this lack of historical understanding.
In a story titled Strike fight rages on in a bubble we have yet another example of this ignorance.

strike rhetoric is oddly mirroring modern politics,
where partisans now filter straight-ahead reporting through an “us vs.
them” prism, seeking out accounts that buttress their views while
shunning those that might challenge them.

This represents a relatively recent dynamic, fueled by the Rush
Limbaugh era of talk radio, cable news and the Internet, which barely
existed during the last strike in 1988. It’s an especially poisonous
environment when applied to this fracas, since talent and the studios
must eventually reunite once the saber-rattling and marching ends,
whereas political combatants (or at least their public mouthpieces) are
now locked in a state of perpetual warfare, the better to spice up the
give and take on “Hannity & Colmes.”

Do people like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes paint
issues in an “us versus them” light? Absolutely! How about during the
American Civil War? How about Rome when Julius Caeser became a tyrant
and was knifed in the Senate? How about the Garden of Eden when God
told Adam and Eve that if they disobeyed they would get evicted? Every
important event through history was based on an “us versus them” basis
because that is the essence of importance. An issue that has importance
to two or more divergent groups will always have contentious moments.
Blaming this on Rush Limbaugh is ridiculous and is symptomatic of a
greater problem for the Left; they don’t have an answer for
Conservative political thinkers so they revert to blaming them for
everything that goes wrong. Sad.

I’m surprised that the Left hasn’t blamed Rush for Pakistan yet.
Pakistani affairs is based on an “us versus them” situation right now.
Musharraf against the Taliban and the terrorists. Bhutto against
Musharraf. Bhutto’s niece against Bhutto. Things in Pakistan are going
to get much worse before they get any better especially if Musharraf
has declared martial law in order to cement his power base. But that
isn’t the only reason he declared martial law.

Al Qaeda, according to its leader Osama bin Laden, declared war on
Pakistan a month ago. Terrorist organizations are taking more land in
the Pakistani badlands every day and Musharraf has reacted to this
threat. Is he a great option for Pakistan? No. Is he the best they
have? Probably. Their other options are, well, basically their other
option is Benazir Bhutto. While Musharraf is a bad option, Bhutto may be a lot worse.
She is extremely corrupt (seems to go with the territory with any
politician, especially those in the Middle East) and was one of three
international leaders that recognized Afghanistan’s Taliban government.
All I have to say right now is that just because the current guy is bad
doesn’t mean he should be deposed because the alternatives may prove to
be much worse.

This incessant need to “do something” isn’t just limited to
Pakistan. Doing something for the sake of change itself is the mantra
of the Left in general. Take climate change for example. The
UN is hard at work creating a 25 page document that is supposed to lay
out a plan designed to “aide” governments in combating climate change.
We still don’t know what causes global warming (it could be the SUN, it
could have something to do with water evaporation, who knows?) but gee
golly we’re going to prevent it!

Maybe we could switch all our energy over ethanol! Well, not so
fast. Cato, named after one of those Senators that was against Caeser
(of course he didn’t stab Caeser because he was dead, suicide) succinctly makes this point:

“Ethanol will not lead to energy independence. If all
the corn produced in America in 2005 were dedicated to ethanol
production (and only 14.3 percent of it was), U.S. gasoline consumption
would have dropped by only 12 percent. For corn ethanol to completely
displace gasoline in this country, we would need to appropriate all
U.S. cropland, turn it over to ethanol production, and then find 20
percent more land on top of that.”

Look, our insatiable appetite for oil is an extremely important
issue, arguably the most important issue for the next half a century.
It’s price is rising faster then a rocket and that money is going to
our enemies. Heck, throw in its ill affects to the environment if that
makes you feel better. Something needs to be done but the last entity I
would entrust to find a solution to this dire predicament is any
government (or an international body). Things will start happening in
the open markets as price increases makes changes economically feasible.

Whatever we end up doing it shouldn’t be done by the government. Take Don’t Look to Government to Cool Down the Planet by John Stossel:

There are good reasons to begin with a presumption
against government action. As coercive monopolies that spend other
people’s money taken by force, governments are uniquely unqualified to
solve problems. They are riddled by ignorance, perverse incentives,
incompetence and self-serving. The synthetic-fuels program during the
Carter years consumed billions of dollars and was finally disbanded as
a failure. The push for ethanol today is more driven by special
interests than good sense — it’s boosting food prices while producing a
fuel of dubious environmental quality.

Even if the climate really needs cooling down, government can’t be
counted on to accomplish that. Advocates of carbon taxes and emissions
trading talk about reducing CO2, but they promise no more than a
minuscule reduction in temperature. Temperature reduction is supposed
to be the objective.

In fact, even drastic plans to cut the use of carbon-based energy
would make only a negligible difference. As John Christy, director of
the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in
Huntsville and a member of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change, wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal:

“Suppose you are very serious about making a dent in carbon
emissions and could replace about 10 percent of the world’s energy
sources with non-CO2-emitting nuclear power by 2020 — roughly
equivalent to halving U.S. emissions. Based on IPCC-like projections,
the required 1,000 new nuclear power plants would slow the warming by
about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit per century. It’s a dent.”

I agree with Stott, who says, “The right approach to climate change
is adaptation — and the way to do that is to have strong economies.”

We will have a strong economy if we don’t give up our freedom and
our money to fulfill the grand schemes of big-government alarmists.

Next week: How the private sector could deal with a global-warming problem.

We’ll be waiting for that next column.

Something that really can’t wait any longer is our airport security. The
GAO has found that it can smuggle bomb making components onto planes,
components that can be made into bombs that could take down a plane.
I’ve heard special ops guys say they can smuggle a broken down sniper
riffle through most security systems (with the Israelis as an
exception). But a bomb? This is what happens when the government (not
counting the military, of course) does something.

The reason why the government cannot be trusted with important
issues is because the politicians that run it are pathetic. Even though
all the frontrunning Democrat hopefuls have put the breaks on getting
the troops out of Iraq before 2013 the House has passed an Iraq war
bill for less then President Bush had asked for with one disgusting
caveat. The troops have to be out by the end of next year. This will doubtlessly be vetoed by the President but there’s no way he should even be put in this position.

In
a different part of the world the Russians have “removed” troops from
Georgia except for “peace keepers” in two separatist regions. Do I
think this move is a noble gesture showing that Russia has turned a
corner and doesn’t want to control those it formerly controlled? No.
This seems to me to be a geopolitical chess move made to make Russian
President Vladimir Putin look like a good guy. He’s positioning himself
to be ruler for life in Russia and is going to need international
support to make sure that everything goes smoothly.

So he has given feckless Western democracies a bone with Georgia
without really giving anything up. He’s going to have his “peace
keepers” work to undermine the Georgian government through the
separatist regions. Mr Putin still believes in an all-powerful Soviet
Union and is making it his life’s work to make that vision become a
reality.

Switching back to America. Home prices seemed to have no ceiling
three years ago. Everyone was worried that people would be priced out
of the market and the middle class would no longer exist. Things have
changed; real estate is at it lowest point in two and a half years
and the floor seems to be nonexistent. The same people that were
decrying the rising real estate prices are playing the same part as the
prices are falling. Shouldn’t everything be better now that more people
can afford homes? I mean, that was the worry just a couple years ago,
prices were just too high for the normal family. I guess this just
shows that you should be careful what you wish for.

Finally we are going to jet set to China where Yahoo! narked on some journalists who were critical of the commies in China.
The journalists were quickly thrown in jail and Yahoo! was shamed. Now
they have secretively settled with the journalists’ families and
they’re hoping that his all blows over. What this situation shows is
that China cannot be trusted. Yes, we still should do business with
them but we need to make it on our terms, not theirs. Throwing
journalists in jail for no good reason is a clear sign that you are in
a totalitarian regime. China cannot be trusted.

BigT’s Linkapalooza:

Chinese sensors being sued for cutting out sex scenes in movie.

More sex, this time with nuns. Exciting!

Spitzer’s license defeat spun as “win” by NY Times.

Hugo mad at Spain.

Brangelina buy island in Dubai.

DC Liberals cheat taxes? Say it ain’t so.

Learning music = higher earnings.

A-Rod, alas, may still play in pinstripes.

BigT