Mountain of the Week: Vinson Massif

Tallest mountain in Antarctica

Hey Lawrence, is This Guy Immoral and Irrational, Too?

William Gray, a meteorological researcher at Colorado State University had this to say recently:

Speaking to a group of Republican MPs, Dr Gray had harsh words for researchers and politicians who said man-made greenhouse gases were responsible for global warming. "They are blaming it all on humans, which is crazy," he said.
"We're not the cause of it."

And Gray goes on further to say:

He said research arguing that humans were causing global warming was "mush" based on unreliable computer models that could not possibly take into account the hundreds of factors that influenced the weather.
He said little-understood ocean currents were behind a decades-long warming cycle, and disputed assertions that greenhouse gases could raise global temperatures as much as some scientists predicted.
"There's no way that doubling CO2 is going to cause that amount of warming," he said.

Better watch it, Mr. Gray. algore and Lawrence Summers might call you 'immoral'.

Another Clinton Administration Official Brainfarts

Lawrence Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration, tells us that those who question the global warming dogma are scum:

With the accumulation of scientific evidence and its persuasive presentation to the public, the global warming debate has reached a new stage. Those who still deny that human activity is warming the planet, or claim that “business as usual” can continue indefinitely without profoundly adverse consequences, are increasingly seen as the moral and intellectual equivalent of those who deny that tobacco has adverse consequences for human health.

Very good, Lawrence. Those of us who find the evidence unpersuasive are not just stupid, we are immoral. Not only that, we are irrational:

The real question for debate is not whether something should be done – that debate is over among the rational.

The arrogance of the left has no limits.

The Clintons are Liars? Perish the Thought!

Can you believe this? A reporter for the Financial Times actually entertains the thought that Hillary and her husband might not always tell the truth:

The book [by Carl Bernstein] could revive the explosive charge, made earlier this year by David Geffen, a former Clinton donor and Hollywood mogul, that “the Clintons lie with such ease, it’s troubling”.

"Explosive?" As if this is something new? The left and their sock puppets in the media never cease to amaze me. Bill and Hillary have been lying their asses off for years. Bill repeatedly claimed that the Republicans in congress were trying to 'cut' Medicare spending when they were actually increasing it. Bill claimed that his fiscal policies caused interest rates to fall during his term, when they were actually rising. Hillary claimed that she made her own cattle futures trades when they were actually made by Tyson attorney Jim Blair. And all throughout, the idiots on the left gave them a pass.

The only time that the yahoos ever noted that Bill was lying was in regards to Monica. They use that incident as a red herring issue whenever someone complains about the Clintons' disregard for the truth, as if Monica is the only issue that Bill or Hillary have ever lied about. How many times did we hear something like "everyone lies about sex"? When it comes to substantial issues like Medicare spending or the economy, the lefties lose all ability to distinguish between truth and fiction.

That is why I have nothing but contempt for the left. Some of them are simply idiots. Others are not, but they think that everyone else is an idiot and repeatedly lie to them and talk down to them. And both groups will swallow almost any lie that the Clintons tell them faster than Monica could swallow.

Mexifornia, Five Years Later

Victor Davis Hansen has a followup to his book Mexifornia, in City Journal:

Since Mexifornia appeared, the debate also no longer splits along liberal/conservative, Republican/Democrat, or even white/brown fault lines. Instead, class considerations more often divide Americans on the issue. The majority of middle-class and poor whites, Asians, African-Americans, and Hispanics wish to close the borders. They see few advantages to cheap service labor, since they are not so likely to need it to mow their lawns, watch their kids, or clean their houses. Because the less well-off eat out less often, use hotels infrequently, and don’t periodically remodel their homes, the advantages to the economy of inexpensive, off-the-books illegal-alien labor again are not so apparent.

As my readers may have noted, I generally side with the Republicans on most issues. But as concerns illegal immigration, the Republicans are every bit as much to blame as the Democrats on this issue.

These class divisions cut both ways, and they help explain the anomaly of the Wall Street Journal op-ed page mandarins echoing the arguments of the elite Chicano studies professors. Both tend to ridicule the far less affluent Minutemen and English-only activists, in part because they do not experience firsthand the problems associated with illegal immigration but instead find millions of aliens grist for their own contrasting agendas.

And this problem will only get worse. Perhaps to the point where we are forced to take matters into our own hands, no matter what the clowns in Washington say.

Stupid Is as Stupid Does

The Dutch bank, ABM Amro, is for sale. The management of the company want to sell to Barclay's, a British bank, for 64 billion euros.

The stockholders of ABN Amro are justifiably angry about this, because a consortium of banks lead by Royal Bank of Scotland has offered 72 billion euros!

So why do the management of ABN Amro want to take the lower offer? This is yet another case of corporate management acting in their own self-interest rather than those of the stockholders.

Sheryl Crow Calls for Limitations on Toilet Paper Use

This is too bizarre to even make up. Not even in my wildest dreams would I have thought that an oatmeal brain "artist" like this woman could come up with something like this:

Crow has suggested using "only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required".

There's not much more I can say. For those of us who want to persuade others to oppose the agenda of the environwacko/global warming fruitcakes, all we need to do is ask them to listen to people like Sheryl Crow.

Barack Obama Cozies Up With Chicago Slumlords

His Earness is a typical limousine liberal. He lives in luxury while his constituents live in squalor. He supports all these great socialist programs that supposedly help the poor while actually making them poorer and more dependent on the government. The Chicago Sun-Times has a revealing article about his relationship with two slumlords in Chicago:

For more than five weeks during the brutal winter of 1997, tenants shivered without heat in a government-subsidized apartment building on Chicago's South Side.
It was just four years after the landlords -- Antoin "Tony'' Rezko and his partner Daniel Mahru -- had rehabbed the 31-unit building in Englewood with a loan from Chicago taxpayers. Rezko and Mahru couldn't find money to get the heat back on.
But their company, Rezmar Corp., did come up with $1,000 to give to the political campaign fund of Barack Obama, the newly elected state senator whose district included the unheated building.

It gets even better:

Much of the criticism has centered on two real estate deals involving Obama's South Side mansion. In the first, Obama paid $300,000 less than the asking price for a doctor's home, while Rezko's wife paid the doctor full price for the vacant lot next door. Then -- a few months before Rezko was indicted -- Obama bought part of that lot from Rezko's wife.

This reminds me of Hillary's sweetheart deal with Tyson chicken and the way they funneled bribe money to her through the cattle futures trading.

Blacks in America have been sold down the river by the likes of Jesse Jackass and Al Sharpton. What they need is a leader who will show them the way to individual responsibility and personal achievement. They don't need another limousine liberal like Obama who only wants to keep them on the welfare/affirmative action/public school plantation.

Coin of the Week: Scottish bawbee of Charles II (1678)

This coin was issued during the period when Scotland and England were two separate countries but ruled by the same kings: The Stewarts of Scotland. I bought a coin similar to this one when I was in Edinburgh two weeks ago. This photo comes from David Parrish's website.

The inscriptions read "Carolus II Dei Gratia Scotorum, Angleterre, France, et Hibernia Rex" (Charles II King of Scotland, England, France, and Ireland by the Grace of God), and "Nemo Me Impune Lacessit" (Don't mess with me).

Mountain of the Week: Shisha Pangma

Found in Tibet. Also known as Gosainthan. This is the fourteenth-highest mountain in the world.

Paul Wolfowitz Gets Smeared by the Left

Our Heroes on the Left have always been quite good at falsely accusing or exaggerating alleged misdeeds of conservatives. Now they have another scalp on their belt. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page reports:

The paper trail shows that Mr. Wolfowitz had asked to recuse himself from matters related to his girlfriend, a longtime World Bank employee, before he signed his own employment contract. The bank's general counsel at the time, Roberto Danino, wrote in a May 27, 2005 letter to Mr. Wolfowitz's lawyers:
"First, I would like to acknowledge that Mr. Wolfowitz has disclosed to the Board, through you, that he has a pre-existing relationship with a Bank staff member, and that he proposes to resolve the conflict of interest in relation to Staff Rule 3.01, Paragraph 4.02 by recusing himself from all personnel matters and professional contact related to the staff member." (Our emphasis here and elsewhere.)
That would have settled the matter at any rational institution, given that his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, worked four reporting layers below the president in the bank hierarchy. But the bank board--composed of representatives from donor nations--decided to set up an ethics committee to investigate. And it was the ethics committee that concluded that Ms. Riza's job entailed a "de facto conflict of interest" that could only be resolved by her leaving the bank.
Ms. Riza was on a promotion list at the time, and so the bank's ethicists also proposed that she be compensated for this blow to her career. In a July 22, 2005, ethics committee discussion memo, Mr. Danino noted that "there would be two avenues here for promotion--an 'in situ' promotion to Grade GH for the staff member" and promotion through competitive selection to another position." Or, as an alternative, "The Bank can also decide, as part of settlement of claims, to offer an ad hoc salary increase."
Five days later, on July 27, ethics committee chairman Ad Melkert formally advised Mr. Wolfowitz in a memo that "the potential disruption of the staff member's career prospect will be recognized by an in situ promotion on the basis of her qualifying record . . ." In the same memo, Mr. Melkert recommends "that the President, with the General Counsel, communicates this advice" to the vice president for human resources "so as to implement" it immediately.
And in an August 8 letter, Mr. Melkert advised that the president get this done pronto: "The EC [ethics committee] cannot interact directly with staff member situations, hence Xavier [Coll, the human resources vice president] should act upon your instruction." Only then did Mr. Wolfowitz instruct Mr. Coll on the details of Ms. Riza's new job and pay raise.

The problem is that all this is too complicated for the simple-minded sheep who blindly follow the fuhrers of the left and their court jesters in the media. But it is clear to anyone who cares to consider at all the facts that Wolfowitz acted properly.

So why is he being smeared? He has made a great effort to hold the World Bank accountable for the money it loans to third world countries. He is taking some people off their gravy train, just like the invasion of Iraq took some people off the 'oil for food' scam.

I am increasingly learning that whenever the Left starts howling about corruption, its more likely necessary to investigate them, rather then whoever they are accusing.

You Knew This Was Coming

The victims of today's tragedy at Virginia Tech have not yet been laid to rest, but the gun control freaks are already using the incident as an excuse to further their sick, misguided political ideals. Here are just a few from:

The Independent (UK)
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
CBS News
The Independent (again)
New York Times

Their names are legion, for they are many. And I am sure that there will be many, many more. They can barely disguise their glee over the dead students' bodies for this opportunity to restrict our most fundamental freedom.

But of course, one thing these massacre sluts don't bother to tell you is that Virginia Tech is a gun-free zone:

A bill that would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus died with nary a shot being fired in the General Assembly.
House Bill 1572 didn't get through the House Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety. It died Monday in the subcommittee stage, the first of several hurdles bills must overcome before becoming laws.

Last spring a Virginia Tech student was disciplined for bringing a handgun to class, despite having a concealed handgun permit.

(Jan 31, 2006)

The only effect this ban had was to make the students unable to defend themselves against the murderer. Do these idiots really think that someone who is capable of murdering 33 people will really care what some gun control law says?

Don Ho: 1930 - 2007

Tiny bubbles

In the wine

Make me happy

Make me feel fine

Tiny bubbles

Make me warm all over

With a feeling that I'm gonna Love you till the end of time

R. I. P.

Blog of the Week: Uncorrelated

One of my favorite blogs. Some words of wisdom from their posts today:

The left might also want to pay attention since no cultural and political ideology has done more damage to the prospects of western nations than socialism and its attendant lunacies.

To which I say "Amen".

Mountain of the Week: Mt. McKinley

Castle of the Week: Dunluce

On the northern coast of Ireland. Can't you just imagine the stuff that happened there?

Charges Against Duke Lacrosse Players to Be Dropped

It's about time. The case never had half a leg to stand on. ABC News is reporting the charges will soon be dropped by the special prosecutors who replaced the race-baiter Nifong.

Wouldn't it be nice if those 88 professors at Duke who signed a petition condemning the innocent young men apologized? Don't hold your breath.

En Garde!

Trying out a sword at CarrickFergus castle, near Belfast. The balance was good but rather long to handle well.

I'm Back

I had a magnificent seven days in Scotland and Ireland. I wish I could have stayed longer.

Things have improved greatly in Belfast and the rest of Ulster since the days of the War. The DUP and UUP (Ulster Protestant parties) are about to enter into a coalition government with the IRA/Sinn Fein in a few weeks. The local economy is booming.

I am naturally an optimistic person, but in this case my optimism must be tempered with the reality of whom my kinsmen in Ulster are dealing with. This is a photo I took in the Catholic section of Belfast, last friday. The author of the graffiti is calling the Israelis "nazis" and showing support for Hamas and Hizbollah, two prominent muslim terrorist groups with whom the IRA have had dealings before.

The IRA are a group of homicidal maniacs, just like their islamofascist allies. They are a marxist group that tried their best to destroy society in Ulster in the 1970s and 1980s. Have they changed their minds? We shall see what we shall see.