Kerry

After much thought on the matter, I’ve decided that John Kerry must actually be a mole working for Karl Rove.

Brilliant.

Update:

An Inconvenient Truth?

I haven’t chased all the links down, but this could be inconvenient if your wagon is hitched to the anthropogenec global warming bandwagon. Seems the sun’s output has not been so steady – and visible radiation isn’t the thing to watch anyhow.

How big a deal is this indirect cloud effect? Huge, actually. In just 5 years it was responsible for a 2% decrease in low clouds (the kind that reflect incoming solar radiation by day) which, in turn, equates to an increase in surface warming of 1.2 Wm-2 from incident radiation — equivalent to some 85% of the IPCC’s estimate for the effect of all carbon dioxide increase since the Industrial Revolution.

California Ballot Propositions

Attention California Voters: Your official Buttle’s World Voting Guide is here.

1A Yes – Make it harder for the government to borrow money.

1B No – It’s a bond measure, so it’d be an automatic no even if it weren’t a whopping $19.925 billion.

1C No – A mere $2.85 billion bond issue. For the “poor and homeless”. Right.

1D No – An additional $10.416 billion in bond debt, anybody? No thanks.

1E No – A toughie. I’m going against Tom McClintock, but with Ray Haynes. What tipped the scales? It’s a $4.09 billion bond measure.

83 Yes – Strengthen Jessica’s Law, and oppose the endorsement of the CA Attorneys for Criminal Justice. What’s to decide?

84 No – You thought we were through throwing money on the fire? No! Here’s a $5.388 billion bond measure, which will really cost about $10.5 billion over 30 years. And for what? “Park Improvements” and “clean water”. If bond measures actually cleaned water, California would be flooded with distilled water by now.

85 Yes – Parental notification if a minor wants an abortion. Duh.

86 No – Tax cigarrettes to fund Emergency Room Services. What a stupid idea. Besides, I apply my own maxim: There is no such thing as a good tax hike, and there is no such thing as a bad tax cut.

87 No – The oil tax scam. If you’re even considering voting for this you’re too stupid to work a computer.

88 No – It’s a tax hike. “For the children” Pull the other one.

89 No – Public funding of campaigns. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

90 Yes – Perhaps the most important initiative on the ballot. Limits abuse of eminent domain. The lefties are howling about this one, because they want your land.

There you have it. As for other races (even in other states) just chant “Speaker Pelosi” as you enter the voting booth. You’ll do the right thing.

Neurology Meets Art

I wish I had time to write more about this fascinating, provocative set of lectures given on BBC by Vilayanur S Ramachandran. Rather than wait until I can get around to it, I’m just posting the link. It’s a lot of reading (or you may choose to listen), but worth it.

Briefly, though, this has been nearly life-changing for me. It’s colored the way I look at almost everything. While I don’t find all of his evolutionary arguments completely persuasive, even his conjectures are illuminating. One thing seems certain: the near future holds many deep and significant discoveries about the brain.

In short, we’re all synesthetes on this bus.

Bush is Wrong

Not sure what he was thinking when he said Iraq was a little like the Tet Offensive in Viet Nam. Perhaps he was remembering that Tet was a victory for us, a defeat for the Viet Cong – except that the media said it was vice versa. It bears repeating: Iraq is not like Viet Nam.

YouTube to get even more PC?

The new “hate speech” flag seems ripe for abuse. I wonder if they’ll have a way to flag users who abuse the flags.

In any case, it’s easy enough to set your preferences to get around the other flags, so this is likely a minor bump on the information superhighway.

Update:

I overlooked the obvious tactic of taking the fight right to GooTube.

Bigger Update:
I neglected to give a hat tip to Dr. Molpus for this link. He got it to me before I saw it on other sites.

Golden State a Silver Lining for the GOP?

I was ready to dismiss this story from the CoCo Times:

[O]ddly enough, in California it may be Democrats who have reason to fear Election Day. Not only does their gubernatorial candidate, Phil Angelides, trail Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger heavily in the polls, but there is growing concern that if Angelides doesn’t inspire Democrats to vote, low party turnout could seal the fate for other vulnerable Democrats — and even left-leaning ballot propositions.

“The Angelides campaign could be a drag if it fails to excite and motivate and turn out occasional voters,” said Darry Sragow, a Democratic consultant. “The fear is there’ll be some kind of Schwarzenegger landslide that will lead to Republican victories in the downticket races. It’s certainly something Democrats need to be concerned about.”

Then I reflected a moment.

I commute through Berkeley. I work with a lot of Prius drivers. There are bumper stickers in the parking lot for every weirdo leftist cause. And I certainly see plenty on the road. And yet I can’t recall having seen a single Angelides campaign sign or bumper sticker. In fairness, I haven’t seen one for Schwarzenegger either. But, still…

Dogs vs. Cats

This would seem to settle the argument, wouldn’t it?

NB: I own neither, and depend on a high-tech fire alarm and my own mobility to save my life.

Army Strong

Blackfive approves of the new Army commercial.

So do I.

Yes, I can tick off a list of every emotional trick being used in it. (Sorta part of my job.) But that’s why I like it.

Armey vs. Dobson

Dick Armey, who seems to make sense just about every time I read him, has a smackdown of Dr. James Dobson. Seems the Focus on the Family leader may not be the benign teddy bear of his public image.

As Majority Leader, I remember vividly a meeting with the House leadership where Dobson scolded us for having failed to “deliver” for Christian conservatives, that we owed our majority to him, and that he had the power to take our jobs back. This offended me, and I told him so.

In a later meeting Dobson and a colleague came into my office to lobby against a trade bill, asking me to stop the legislation from going to the House floor. They were wrong on the issue, and I told them no. Would you at least postpone the vote, they asked? We have a direct mail fundraising letter about to go out to our membership, they said.

I wondered then if their opposition to the bill was driven less by their moral compass and more by the need to rile their membership and increase revenue. I wondered then, if these self-appointed Christian leaders, like many politicians, had come to Washington to do good, but had instead done well for themselves.

How to Be a Racist in England

Simply be a student and mention that you can’t understand what your table mates are saying because they don’t speak English.

Then you get arrested.

Any questions?

Best Cuban Joke Ever

Mario Loyola’s translation made me laugh out loud.

It can only be better in Spanish.

Update:

It is, slightly. Loyola kindly sent me the original.

Vladimir Putin en una reciente visita que hizo a Cuba encontró que la mayoría de los cubanos tenían los zapatos rotos, y le preguntó a Fidel

Oye chico, cómo es posible esto después de 40 años de “mejoras”?

Fidel molesto le contestó : ¿ y en Rusia qué, Chico ? ¿ es que acaso ustedes lo han hecho mejor?

Ombe chico, le contestó Putin, cuando quieras te invito a Rusia y si te encuentras a alguien con los zapatos rotos tienes permiso para matarlo. No hay problemas…

Se montaron en el avión de Putin y fueron a Rusia. En cuanto Fidel salió del avión lo primero que vio fue una persona con los zapatos rotos, entonces sacó su pistola y PUM, lo mató.

Al día siguiente todos los periódicos de Rusia tenían el siguiente titular:

VIEJO BARBUDO MATA AL EMBAJADOR DE CUBA EN EL AEROPUERTO DE MOSCU

I was wrong

Well, I hoped I would be.

Something still smells funny about the plane crash, though. I can’t imagine what level of distraction would have me fly into the broad side of a high rise building while looking for a place to ditch. Maybe it was a bad case of eyes in the cockpit or a stall/spin.

Glad it wasn’t terrorism, though.

Maybe they think the Genius Bar serves booze

Some Islamists are upset about the NY Apple store.

According to the message, the cube-shaped building which is being constructed in New York City, on Fifth Avenue between 58th and 59th Streets in midtown Manhattan, is clearly meant to provoke Muslims.

The Register reports

Sadly, it’s a bit late for that, since the store opened for business back in May. We do have some good news, though. As far as we’re aware it’s not called the “Apple Mecca”, it does not serve alcoholic beverages, and neither Jack Straw nor Salman Rushdie work behind the counter.

LGFHas a theory that maybe they reacted to what it looked like under construction. Or maybe that the vile moonbat at sfgate, to whome I shall not link, started it.

Capitalism, the Dynamo

Jonah Goldberg says of this essay:

If you missed this shockingly long essay in the Wall Street Journal by Nobel winner Edmund Phelps, print it out and save it. One day it will be useful to force your college-age kids to read it for deprogramming purposes. I think some folks at Tapped simply burst into flames when reading it.

I agree, except for calling it “shockingly long”.

I still haven’t read any Hyek (and yes, I know I should), but I’ve read Rand. Phelps put them in nice perspective for me:

We all feel good to see people freed to pursue their dreams. Yet Hayek and Ayn Rand went too far in taking such freedom to be an absolute, the consequences be damned. In judging whether a nation’s economic system is acceptable, its consequences for the prospects of the realization of people’s dreams matter, too. Since the economy is a system in which people interact, the endeavors of some may damage the prospects of others. So a persuasive justification of well-functioning capitalism must be grounded on its all its consequences, not just those called freedoms.

Frist Foolishness

Gotta love Andrew Stuttaford’s take on Frists dumb anti-gambling move. The part that makes my head real is not this quote:

“If an adult in this country, with his or her own money, wants to engage in an activity that harms no one, how dare we prohibit it because it doesn’t add to the GDP or it has no macroeconomic benefit. Are we all to take home calculators and, until we have satisfied the gentleman from Iowa that we are being socially useful, we abstain from recreational activities that we choose?… People have said, What is the value of gambling ? Here is the value. Some human beings enjoy doing it. Shouldn’t that be our principle? If individuals like doing something and they harm no one, we will allow them to do it, even if other people disapprove of what they do.”

It’s who said it.

Update 12 Oct :
Stuttaford got some feedback from the Hill which may be illuminating.

Place Your Bets

Fearlessly speculating, Buttle’s World hereby predicts that this plane crash in NYC turns out to be a suicide, not an accident. And I’m going with better than fifty percent odds that the pilot (no passengers) turns out to have a middle-eastern name, whether given at birth or recently taken.

You don’t just bump into the broad side of a building in VFR conditions like that.

I hope I’m wrong. Just putting a time stamp on my guess here.

The Road to Serfdom

A depressing bit of reality from Ray Haynes this week. Speaking of the business community in California, he writes:

They are afraid, they tell me, of retaliation from the government, if they don’t oppose the initiative. Local governments are telling business and developers that, if they don’t oppose Proposition 90, they will make their business lives miserable. They are being told that if they donate money, their projects will be fast tracked. However, if they don’t help, their projects will go into some sort of governmental purgatory, lost in the bowels of some regulatory or planning agency until the new temple is built in Jerusalem. I am told that they have to oppose us because they just can’t risk it.

That is how far down the road to socialism California has gone. So much of the financial future of our business community depends on government action that the business community trembles in fear of the government officials. The ruling class in California knows that Proposition 90 will be their Waterloo, and they are trying to enlist the aid of all of their economic slaves to fight this last battle. The business community, now the economic slaves of our state government, is willing to sell out the freedom of us all to stay in business.

Curse Hayek for being so right.

When I Run for Office

I’ll have David Zucker do the campaign ads.

Probably.

Keeping an Eye on the Apologists

Two resources making sure that the jihad apologists at CAIR are unmasked:

The Anti-CAIR and CAIR Watch.

Potpourri

Just moved. Still unpacking. No time to blog. A few quick items:

It’s really time to celebrate diversity – from the safety of your own home.

Richard Miniter has a nice summation of the Clinton Legacy.

If all that gets you down, just visit the Nietzsche Family Circus.

I know I’m not supposed to ask this

but… Why do stupid people seem to go out of their way to, well, look stupid?

Challenging Kelo

I was heartened to read this in today’s Patriot Post:

The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment states: “…nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Completely ignoring the words “public use,” last year the Supremes held that a city could forcibly take your home to build a privately owned shopping mall (Kelo v. New London). In
response, the House recently passed a bill that would overturn Kelo (no odds yet on whether the Supremes will let such a nefarious law stand, if indeed it becomes a law), and many states have considered bills that would, in effect, restore the Takings Clause to our jurisprudence. That is, if the government takes your home, it must be for a public purpose and they must pay for the right.

Well, that sure got some folks in a tizzy. Turns out that these newfangled counterrevolutionary (read: constitutional) laws may cover a significant portion of land-use restrictions. These laws not only reinstate the public-purpose test, but they might also reinstate the just-compensation part. In other words, the government would actually have to pay for the right to prohibit you from using your land as anything other than a public park.

At the risk of sounding like 1960s radicals, we say “Right On!” Horror of horrors, paying when you take private property. Why, with this sort of potential collapse of the social order, it might soon be legal to eat junk food in New York City.

I’ve long thought that rent control and even zoning laws are an unconstitutional “taking”. I hope this trend catches on.

Predicting the Future

Here’s a valiant try at predicting life in 2000, published in 1950. It’s an object lesson in just how hard it is to predict the future. Some of the guesses are laughably wrong. And yet…

Fast jet and rocket-propelled mail planes made it so hard for telegraph companies all over the world to compete with the postal service that dormant facsimile-transmission systems had to be revived. It takes no more than a minute to transmit and receive in facsimile a five-page letter on paper of the usual business size. Cost? Five cents. In Tottenville the clerks in telegraph offices no longer print out illegible words. Everything is transmitted by phototelegraphy exactly as it is written—illegible spelling, blots, smudges and all. Mistakes are the sender’s, never the telegraph company’s.

That’s pretty close on the cost, if not the speed.

Wafa Sultan, Eagle

My wife has taught our daughter that she can choose: Be an eagle, a sheep, or a pig. I reinforced the lesson by pointing out that all a sheep gets to see is other sheeps’ bottoms, producing giggles and, no doubt, powerful learning.

Wafa Sultan, the bravest woman in the world, is an eagle. Here she is discussing the necessary transformation of Islam, and the cartoon furor, on Danish TV.

“…and this is my receipt, for your receipt.”

If you’ve seen Brazil, you’ll know why this story is being linked on Buttle’s World.

Maps of War

Jonah Goldberg posted this cool map showing about 5,000 years of middle east history in 90 seconds.

Don’t Get Me Started

It’s an over-produced product of yet another left-wing TV talking head, this time from England. And yet this documentary is a breath of fresh air. Why? Because, at last, we have leftists saying there’s no excuse for terrorism.

It’s up on that link in four parts. Worth watching, I’d say. (If for no other reason than to hear one of them say “Michael Moore is an idiot”.) But it’s more serious than that. I had never seen footage of Galloway before. What a piece of work he is.

The Emptier the Bottle

the more noise it makes when you pour it out.

Keith Olbermann, the mental midget with a microphone and a camera, seems hell-bent on convincing me that I should never go back to watching television.

Hero Vindicated

Niel Armstrong is my kind of hero. When the best available evidence was that he muffed his line on the moon, dropping the “a”, he accepted that he may have screwed up. But now it seems that (as I suspected all along) the “a” was just obscured by static. Says Armstrong:

“I have reviewed the data and Peter Ford’s analysis of it, and I find the technology interesting and useful,” he said.

“I also find his conclusion persuasive. Persuasive is the appropriate word.”

No word yet on whether or not he really found Allah on the moon.