At an emergency board meeting tomorrow, the fair board will consider adopting a resolution opposing the sale of the Orange County Fairgrounds.
As of now, the decision rests in the hands of the governor’s administration. Whether or not he will approve the bid for the property is yet to be seen, though I suspect he will accept it and hope he does.
Judging from this video, George Will and I agree on a few things. First, Chuck DeVore will be the Republican nominee for Barbara Boxer’s senate seat. And second, Meg Whitman helped persuade Tom Campbell to jump for the gubernatorial race to the senate race because she does not want Carly on the ballot with her. Good theories, methinks.
Just saying it’s so worked for a long time for global warming alarmists. Of course, the wheels are falling off that cart. But let’s deal for a moment with the central claim that the science is settled.
Here’s an excerpt from a great letter to the EPA by physicist Howard Hayden (emphasis ours):
“It has been often said that the ’science is settled’ on the issue of CO2 and climate. Let me put this claim to rest with a simple one-letter proof that it is false. The letter is s, the one that changes model into models.
“If the science were settled, there would be precisely one model, and it would be in agreement with measurements.
“Alternatively, one may ask which one of the twenty-some models settled the science so that all the rest could be discarded along with the research funds that have kept those models alive.”
“We can take this further. Not a single climate model predicted the current cooling phase. If the science were settled, the model (singular) would have predicted it.”
Settled science? We guess that settles that.
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Today’s Global Warming Quote of the Day comes courtesy of this article, “The Great Global Warming Collapse,” by Margaret Wente of the U.K.’s Globe and Mail (emphasis ours):
“The global warming movement as we have known it is dead,” the brilliant analyst Walter Russell Mead says in his blog on The American Interest. It was done in by a combination of bad science and bad politics.
Ms. Wente’s report concludes:
By exaggerating the certainties, papering over the gaps, demonizing the skeptics and peddling tales of imminent catastrophe, they’ve discredited the entire climate-change movement. The political damage will be severe. As Mr. Mead succinctly puts it: “Skeptics up, Obama down, cap-and-trade dead.”
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I won’t hide the fact that I’m pleased because the team I picked — on the basis of having spent more time in New Orleans than in Indianapolis (a single three-day conference) and liking New Orleans better as a city despite manifold obvious dysfunctionalities, truth to tell — managed to win. Even more gratifying is that it was a terrific game, more evenly contested than the score indicated, one that might well have gone into overtime or that the Colts might have won if the Saints hadn’t picked off that Peyton pass. There have been plenty of Super Bowls that turned out to be lousy games, either mistake-ridden or lopsided. Nice to see one that could have gone either way.
Just on the off chance that people who come to the blog don’t read everything on the opinion pages, here’s a link to the piece I did on prospects for Haiti not just coming back, which would be coming back to the highest poverty and misery levels in the Western Hemisphere, but experiencing some improvement in living conditions. When we decided to do this piece a couple of weeks ago I thought there might be a chance for Haiti to get a fresh start. But the more I read and the more people with serious knowledge of Haiti I talked to, the less optimistic I became. Sorry. I would love to be wrong.
When he ran for president, Barack Obama promised things would be done above board, out in the open, in full view of the public, now hidden. Yeah, that worked. The successive flavors of health reform were hammered out - and wheeled and dealed - almost exclusively behind closed doors, out of view, in secret, restricted sessions to the point that virtually no one knew what they were voting on when votes were taken.
Well, now that the Dems have lost that supermajority, the Prez says he wants to meet with opponents, to discuss all their ideas and to do this all in full view of the people. Remember the people?
Don’t kid yourself. As little of this will be above board and fully disclosed as possible. Why? Because Mr. Obama and company know the more people find out about their plans for us, the less people like it.
This feint to openness is a bone to the GOP to get them aboard. Then the doors will slam again. You read it here.
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The embarrassing revelations about the fraudulent claims behind global warming alarmism keep coming at a rapid rate. They appear now in the plural. Today, for example, we point out:
1. The claim that rising temperatures could cut in half agricultural yields in African countries turns out to have come from a 2003 paper published by a Canadian environmental think tank - not a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Oops.
2. Geologists for Space Studies in Geophysics and Oceanography and their U.S. and Canadian colleagues reveal that previous studies largely overestimated Alaskan glacier loss for the past 40 years. Forty percent? Close enough for government work, apparently. This is the kind of stuff fed into those computers that make those oh-so-reliable predictions. GIGO. Oops.
3. Two Democratic senate committee chairmen have joined the chorus in Congress to stop the EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases for fear the administrative diktats will further harm the economy. There are now multiple fronts in Congress building opposition to this warming alarmism. Oops.
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Carly Fiorina is showing that she is inept at campaigning seriously, especially using technology. It is odd that a former high tech CEO is so bad when it comes to technology, but is evident by her latest in a number of bad public relations moves over the Internet.
This week Carly’s campaigned launched a video called FCino: Fiscal Conservative in Name Only. The title is an obvious and failed attempt at trying to co-opt the term RINO, Republican in Name Only, which could be a fair description of her own candidacy.
The Carly camp decided to launch the website and video apparently to take a shot at the fiscal credentials of Tom Campbell, who recently joined the senate race with some polls showing him leading both Fiorina and Chuck DeVore. Ironically enough, Tom’s best credential is his financial savvy so it makes sense that Carly would attack him on his past advocacy for tax increases and the like.
I don’t fault her for her criticism of Campbell, what I do fault her for is her the way she did it…using the likeness of an odd, demon sheep. Give me a break. The video reminds me of a low budget, PBS, kids show featuring a man dressed up in a sheep costume crawling around. No really, that was the entire video.
This isn’t her first offense though. The former tech maven launched what some called “the worst political campaign website ever” last September with the memorable slogan: “Carlyfornia Dreamin!!!”
I guess I could give her campaign Kudos for trying to be humorous and I guess innovative, but the only thing I find laughable is her campaign and its tactics.
Since I put up the post some time back on Scott Horton’s article about three deaths of detainees at Guantanamo (two of whom were about to be released) who may have died during interrogation, or at least that the official story about how they died (suicide) and how their deaths were discovered had some holes in it, I though I should link to some criticisms of the Horton article as well.
Jack Shafer at Slate is, in my opinion, the sharpest media critic now writing. In a column on Horton’s piece he says it “never comes close to making its case that prisoners Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani may have been murdered at a secret CIA installation at Gitmo . . .” He also references several pieces — here, here, here, here — from First Things blogger Joe Carter that contests Horton’s article point by point.
Jack Shafer is hardly a credulous stooge for government. But with all due respect — and in this case I do respect Shafer, though that phrase is often used as code for demonstrating zero respect — I think Shafer is a bit too harsh. Horton doesn’t claim he has proven that the three detainees were killed either purposely or inadvertently; he’s quite careful to say that he is raising questions that the stories of a couple of eyewitnesses he has interviewed virtually demand about the official government version of what happened. But some of the questions Joe Carter raises about Horton’s article do deserve serious consideration — though he undermines his own credibility with a gratuitous dismissal of Harper’s, an utterly unnecessary rhetorical flourish.
You’ve got all sides now. Talk among yourselves.
