Good weather for skiing on October 9th

Former Vice President Al Gore will be flying into Madison on October 9th to lecture us all how our over-consumption and our excess carbon emissions will doom the planet like Krypton. Given the history of these events, we can expect anyone who disagrees with Gore's apocalyptic vision to be branded as the moral equivalent of NAZI death camp commandants. We can also expect Madison to be unseasonably cold that day.

My suggestion to the residents of Madison is prepare to dress warmly that day. You might even want to check your snowblowers the day before to make sure they're running properly. I find that using non-reformulated gas is essential for the first use of the snowblower each season.

Clinton-era sensitive data missing from national archives

The National Archives is missing a hard disk with sensitive personal data from the Clinton Administration. Do you know how many trailer park bimbos' phone numbers might be lost?

The National Archives lost a computer hard drive containing massive amounts of sensitive data from the Clinton administration, including Social Security numbers, addresses, and Secret Service and White House operating procedures, congressional officials said Tuesday.

One of former Vice President Al Gore's three daughters is among those whose Social Security numbers were on the drive, but it was not clear which one. Other information includes logs of events, social gatherings and political records.

Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper said in a written statement that the agency was preparing to notify affected individuals of the breach. The representative of former President Bill Clinton has been notified, but Cooper gave no indication whether the former president's personal information was on the hard drive.

"The drive contains an as yet unknown amount of personally identifiable information of White House staff and visitors," the statement added.

The FBI is conducting a criminal investigation of the matter, according to Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Towns and the committee's senior Republican, Rep. Darrell Issa of California, said they would continue to seek more information.

Anybody check Sandy Berger's pants?

I just gained a lot more respect for Marty Peretz

Mickey Kaus, on his blog at Slate, publishes a thread from the infamous "Journolist," the liberal media e-mail discussion group trying to stay private and off the record. If this is the best Peretz's critics can come up with, he has nothing to fear from these intellectual lightweights.

Heck, I can be harsher and more on target than these guys. All anyone has to say is, "Al Gore."

A little fine art humor

Click to enlarge.

Some inauguration notes

The latest reports are that Senator Kennedy is recovering from his inaugural lunch seizure.

Meanwhile, Senator Robert Byrd, seated at the same table as Kennedy and Vice President Biden, left the inauguration luncheon early, too. His spokesman denied there were any medical reasons, and that the senator was resting in his senate office.

So why did Byrd leave early? Did he want to get back to his comfy white robe, hood and slippers?

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Can we please ban the public reading of poetry at presidential inaugurations? Some things are best left to be done in private. At least, any poem that includes patching a tire.

I asked on Twitter and Facebook for reaction from some people who watched it live.

Brian Dunbar: The poem was .. okay. The kind they made us learn in school instead of the good stuff.

Keith Conrad commented on both the poem and the John Williams piece:
I thought both were bad actually. But the poem was worse.

Ric Larson (Silent E):
If I transcribed about 5 minutes of random thoughts from my 6 year old, it would've been just about as interesting.

The Asian Badger may win the prize for the best comment:
Think Bryant Gumbel calling an NFL game.
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Horse's Ass of the Day:
Congressman Jim Moran tried to pull a DYKWIA to get his wife into the Capitol while the area was in lock down.

Soon Moran stormed out of the building and angrily confronted the police officer looking at his wife and shouting, "Is this the one?" He then got in the officer's face and insisted that he did not know the proper procedure. Moran's wife was then allowed in the building under her husband's congressional escort.

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HAotD Runners Up, the audience members that booed President Bush. Perhaps they should listen more closely when President Obama when he repeated that it was time to put away childish things. Or as Jay Nordlinger commented:

When I read that the crowd today booed President Bush — and then saw a video of it — I thought of a quip my friend Eddie made, not long ago: “When the Left asks for a classless society, now I know what they mean.”

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Vice President Biden makes me miss Vice President Gore.

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How do you hand out more tickets for an inauguration than you can handle? Thousands of people were turned away. At least they didn't invite themselves in.
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Don't mess with Senator Clinton. Yep, she's still a senator because Senator Cornyn put a hold on her Secretary of State nomination. This led to a heated conversation today between the senators.
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I can't decide if the person that comes up with the text for the links on CNN's website believes in The Force or believes we elected Moses. The wording of the link for the transcript to Obama's speech, "Obama raises hand, lifts a nation."

Stuffing your cash into a mattress up today

Fox News is showing a picture of Barack Obama and Al Gore on the right side of the screen with the caption, "Big Meeting." Directly underneath is the Dow ticker, down 186 points.

Living in an energy-sucking cocoon

This is pretty funny, actually. The national Americans for Prosperity has been touring the country in a hot air balloon to campaign against "global warming alarmism" and its economic costs.

The balloon was grounded in Nashville because allies of former Vice President Al Gore are trying to protect him from further embarassment over his energy consumption.

Here's the update from AFP's Director of Policy Phil Kerpen:

FYI breaking news from our team on the ground in Nashville. The Nashville Parks Department is denying us permission to launch the balloon, citing the fact that our permit says balloon rides but not specifically the word "launch." This despite the fact that we have explained to them on the phone multiple times our precise flight plan and before today there was no indication that there was a problem or any defect in our permit. Clearly, Gore is calling in favors to stop the embarrassing visual and negative coverage surrounding our event and ratcheting up the beating he is taking over his home energy use.

I would love to be on that phone conversation. "Explain to me how a balloon gives rides without it launching."

Update! Up, up and away!

Gore Finds Hot Air Balloon Fly-Over of Nashville-Area Mansion an “Inconvenient Truth”

- At Last Moment, Parks Dept. Mysteriously Revokes Balloon Permit to Fly over Gore’s Mansion, Group Identifies Alternative Private Location for Launch-

NASHVILLE – At the last moment, Nashville Metro Parks and Recreation Department officials revoked a permit for the free-market grassroots group Americans for Prosperity to launch and fly a hot-air balloon over Al Gore’s Nashville-area mansion. The “mysterious” decision was handed down days after an article was published by The Tennessean in which Al Gore’s spokeswoman said they were “looking into whether the balloon launch violated any local ordinances.”

“This is a suspicious decision to say the least,” said AFP President Tim Phillips. “But taxpayers will not be silenced when it comes to the economic costs of Al Gore’s global warming alarmism.”

The fly-over of Al Gore’s mansion is part of AFP’s nationwide hot air balloon tour, which aims to provide an economic reality check on the “hot air” in the global warming debate. Despite the Parks Department's best attempts to scuttle AFP's event, the group's balloon was successfully launched from private property after staffers quickly scrambled to find another location.

AFP event-planning staff had numerous conversations with the Parks Department and took all the necessary steps to ensure the balloon event was in compliance with local rules. Friday was the first time AFP was notified of any problem. Roy Wilson, Director of the Board of Metro Parks and Recreation, threatened police presence would be at Warner Park to ensure the event did not take place.

“We made a good faith effort to comply with all local rules, which included having extensive conversations with the Parks Department, filing the necessary insurance information, and making payment for the permit,” said Phillips. “We’ve already held a dozen events as part of this Tour. It is disappointing and disconcerting that, here in Mr. Gore’s hometown, government officials would see fit to wrongfully revoke a permit on the day of the event.”

“In these uncertain economic times it is foolhardy to push for regulations that would transfer dollars from families and businesses to bureaucratic big-government,” said Phillips. “We want to make sure citizens know what global warming alarmism will cost them – higher taxes, lost jobs, and less freedom. Those who claim global warming policies are healthy for our economy are spewing a lot of hot air and we want to expose that.”

“The United States Hot Air Balloon Team has conducted launches and tethers from Mt. Rushmore, New York’s Central Park, and the Grand Canyon,” said U.S. Hot Air Balloon Team Lead Pilot Stan Hess, who is flying for the Tour. “In my 25-plus years of ballooning we have never had an issue like this. The balloon is federally registered aircraft and once you are in the air you are under FAA jurisdiction.”

Idiot politicians of the week

To err is human. To really screw things up, you need a computer. If you invented the internet, you can be a complete idiot. Former Vice President Al Gore giving the commencement address at Carnegie Mellon University told the graduating class there were two "special generations", the Founding generation and the generation that defeated Fascism. We can argue about the latter. After all, they did vote for Franklin Roosevelt four times. But to say that there are only two "special generations" is to miss much of United States history. Certainly the generations that defeated slavery or fought at Belleau Wood or charged San Juan Hill might have some say in the matter. The generations that originally settled this continent with few resources while facing hostile natives certainly deserve some mention. The succeeding generations that spread across the continent building a new and proud nation out of the wilderness could each lay claim to being special, too.

Perhaps Gore hung around the Oval office too much when Bill Clinton desperately searched for some sort of legacy, a pathetic baby-boomer self-indulgent attempt at self-justification when all that was ever achieved by Clinton was tawdry self-gratification. It might explain Gore's holier-than-thou crusade.

Gore describes climate change as the greatest threat to civilization in the history of our planet. He excludes, of course, the black plague, the threat of thermonuclear war, the Hun invasion of Europe, and today's threat of thermonuclear terrorism.

But we're looking for a reason to make the next generation special. Gore claims they can be special if they successfully fight global warming. Let's compare the threat of Fascism with the threat of global warming. The total cost in human life of World War II is estimated at 56,125,262. Communism is estimated to have killed 100,000,000people. Global warming has resulted in one Nobel prize for Al Gore and a bunch of puffed-up self-styled intellectuals coming up with questionable policy recommendations that will have little effect except to the global economy.

Objectionable, even horrible, to be sure, but not on a par with Fascism.

Speaking of the war against fascism, this week we mourn the loss of Irena Sendler. Daniel Hannan wrote in the Telegraph:

A Polish Catholic, she spirited some 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto, displaying casual and extraordinary courage. She kept a list of the children she had saved, hoping one day to reunite them with their parents – although, in the event, almost all lost their families in Treblinka. In 1943, she was arrested by the Gestapo and tortured. Her legs and feet were broken, but she refused to give up her list. She was sentenced to death, but rescued, whereupon – almost unbelievably – she went back to work.

Here, though, is the sentence that leapt off the page at me: “Last year she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, eventually won by Al Gore.” Al Gore!

I'm sure Irena Sendler never gave her carbon footprint a second thought. Ironically, neither does the former Vice President. But Sendler's example and her courage reminds us that when it comes to the idiot politicians of the week, we can safely award the prize to the Nobel Peace Prize committee that chose to cast her great works aside in favor of honoring a self-righteous hypocritical scold who happened to make a terrible movie. It would take a committee of complete idiots to not honor great physical and moral courage in the service of humanity and instead honor the former vice president just to make a symbolic gesture against the inhumanity of the internal combustion engine.

Educating the Idiot Politician of the Week

Time for another installment of Idiot Politician of the Week. I didn’t want to, but I felt I owed it to them somehow.

Welcome to Cudahy where the mating call is, “I’m so drunk.” Yes, the punch line of Milwaukee County is too good for Wal-Mart. Casting the deciding vote was Mayor Ryan McCue. You may remember him from such documentaries as “Screw the Taxpayers” and “Your Milwaukee County Board: Good Work If You Can Get It.” According to McCue, well…, nothing. He’s refused to say why he’s opposed to Wal-Mart. He prefers to remain silent and be thought an idiot rather than open his mouth and remove all doubt.

Removing all doubt this week was former Vice President Al Gore, who took advantage of a cyclone that perhaps killed 100,000 people in Myanmar to suggest that it was the result of global warming. Perhaps if they had the Internet in Myanmar, they would understand that tornados have never happened before the introduction of the internal combustion engine, and really all those deaths have nothing to do with living in an especially impoverished third-world brutal kleptocracy.

Dropping into Milwaukee to remind us all why she was President Ronald Reagan’s biggest mistake, former US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor told her audience that electing judges is wrong, and that Arizona has a better way. Of course, the Arizona method made her a judge, and her tenure on the US Supreme Court is strong evidence that an unaccountable judiciary is not a good thing.

Then there’s Senator Barack Obama who announced in Oregon he has traveled to “57 states” and has “only one left.” He must’ve figured it out using the same math that shows a windfall profits tax will lower gas prices. I’m not even going to comment on the apparent sad state of education in Illinois.

But speaking of the sad state of education, this week’s “Idiot Politician of the Week” is conspiracy theorist and Muslim convert Kevin Barrett who has decided to take on Congressman Ron Kind (D) as a Libertarian. Barrett once proved idiots are in control of UW-Madison when he was allowed to teach despite publicly supporting a theory that the events of September 11, 2001 were somehow planned and carried out by the US government.

Details of Barrett’s candidacy can be found in the online conspiracy theory newsletter Capital Times where associate editor John Nichols called Barrett, “the 9/11 skeptic” and “the media-savvy activist.” Nichols’ next interview will be with a spokesman for conspiracy theorists that don’t believe man walked on the moon. Unfortunately for Nichols, the Weekly World News is no longer publishing.

Barrett will fit in well with the misfits of the Wisconsin Libertarian Party. But aside from the wacko conspiracy theory, did he really feel the need to tell Nichols he plans to run an, “all-out no-holds-barred truth jihad”?

I’m sure local Muslims are wishing he would convert to something else. “Really, no problem, no death threats. Just go.” After all, other than the Libertarians, who would want to be associated with the Idiot Politician of the Week?

Lay it on her Bill!

The lovely Doreen from Waukesha wants to know why Hillary Clinton didn't finish her speech tonight with a big kiss like Al Gore and Tipper.

Al Gore invents climate change

So?

Pictures telling a different story

Eugene Kane claims this picture has Black America "buzzing".
I'll take his word for it. I'm just thankful it wasn't a repeat of this picture.

"Pucker up, baby. I'm about to give you the Nobel Prize."

Van Hollen 4 Block World

With sincere apologies to the indispensible Tom McMahon.

Not Just a Pretty Face

Why regulate television, phones and ISPs?

Why do we have cable monopolies? Why can't different cable companies compete within the same community? Why can't Waukesha have Time Warner and Comcast? What is the benefit to any community to have the aldermen choose one cable company over another?

As long as the different companies that use the telephone poles in the right of ways pay their "fair" share merely to maintain the poles, does it really matter if there is one line or twenty?

Under ideal conditions, a municipality would contract with a private company to maintain the poles. That company would then charge the different services an appropriate fee for the use of the poles. The use of the poles would then be unlimited except to the extent that the content provider could pay the fee. If the maintenance company charged too much, obviously they would have less content providers using their poles. The market would create an acceptable level of cost to use the poles, add in satellite competition, and television content costs would be truly market driven. Places like Milwaukee and Madison and even Waukesha would have a plethora of services.

Let's take a look at another facet of television content provision. Right now cable television customers do not have access to the Big Ten channel and the NFL channel. Those of use who use an alternative source of television content happily can watch the Wisconsin Badgers and the Green Bay Packers regardless of which channel has the "broadcast" rights because our television content providers have chosen to reach an agreement with those channels. As a result, Time Warner is losing customers to the alternative sources, so there is some pressure on Time Warner to come to an agreement with the two channels. If we were to allow direct competition by allowing all cable companies to compete within the geographic area, there would be even more pressure on cable companies to provide that content.

However, free competition would also allow for television content providers to specialize in the content they provide. Imagine a Christian cable company, for example, that would specialize in only providing Christian-oriented channels and programming. The choices for the subscriber would obviously be limited, but we could also expect that the subscriber's costs would also be less as they would not have to pay for content they do not wish to watch. Instead of trying to force à la carte programming, we could achieve it through the free market, even having niche content providers. We could even have Air America left-wing cable if we wanted: Al Gore's channel, Michael Moore movie channel, HBO documentaries, etc.

Now let's really expand our imaginations. Why should television content be provided to a point rather than an individual or a family regardless of location? If I travel, why shouldn't my content preferences travel with me since I'm paying for the service? This was the idea satellite radio touched without being able to exploit it directly. What difference does it make to my cable, satellite or fiber optic television provider where I am at the moment I access my service? Right now geography plays a huge role, unfortunately. But as internet video advances, even if we do not de-regulate television content provision we will surely reach the point where all television content is on demand wherever we demand it. It's just a matter of our ISP being able to follow us.

The only losers under such a scheme would be those local government units who have taken advantage of offering the monopolies to their profit to subsidize other government operations.

(Okay, bring it on. Let me see what objections to market television provision I have missed.)

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The search for Spock

David Brooks (Times Select) examines Former Vice President Al Gore's "The Assault on Reason" and finds it worth reading,

It reminds us that whatever the effects of our homogenizing mass culture, it is still possible for exceedingly strange individuals to rise to the top.

Gore is, for example, a radical technological determinist. While most politicians react to people, Gore reacts to machines, and in this book he lays out a theory of history entirely driven by them.

Gore, who once called the internal combustion engine "...a mortal threat to the security of every nation that is more deadly than that of any military enemy are ever again likely to confront," now turns his ire to television.

In Gore’s view, TV immobilizes the reasoning centers in the brain and stimulates the primitive, instinctive parts. TV creates a “visceral vividness” that is not “modulated by logic, reason and reflective thought.”

TV allows political demagogues to exaggerate dangers and stoke up fear. Furthermore, “conglomerates can dominate the expressions of opinion that flood the mind of the citizenry” and “the result is a de facto coup d’état overthrowing the rule of reason.”

Fortunately, another technology is here to save us. “The Internet is perhaps the greatest source of hope for re-establishing an open communications environment in which the conversation of democracy can flourish,” he writes. The Internet will restore reason, logic and the pursuit of truth.

The first response to this argument is: Has Al Gore ever actually looked at the Internet? He spends much of this book praising cold, dispassionate logic, but is that really what he finds on most political blogs or in his e-mail folder?

But then Brooks exposes the central flaw in Gore's book (and the ideological mind),

Gore is laying out a comprehensive theory of social development, but it allows almost no role for family, friendship, neighborhood or just face-to-face contact. He sees society the way you might see it from a speaking podium — as a public mass exercise with little allowance for intimacy or private life. He envisions a sort of Vulcan Utopia, in which dispassionate individuals exchange facts and arrive at logical conclusions.

This, in turn, grows out of a bizarre view of human nature. Gore seems to have come up with a theory that the upper, logical mind sits on top of, and should master, the primitive and more emotional mind below. He thinks this can be done through a technical process that minimizes information flow to the lower brain and maximizes information flow to the higher brain.

The reality, of course, is that there is no neat distinction between the “higher” and “lower” parts of the brain. There are no neat distinctions between the “rational” mind and the “visceral” body. The mind is a much more complex network of feedback loops than accounted for in Gore’s simplistic pseudoscience.

Without emotions like fear, the “logical” mind can’t reach conclusions. On the other hand, many of the most vicious, genocidal acts are committed by people who are emotionally numb, not passionately out of control.

There is an amount of intellectual arrogance in assuming that one's political philosophy is the only one that can be realized through reason. It's that type of arrogance that should make anyone uncomfortable, regardless of political beliefs. Of course, Gore has given us cause to be uncomfortable before.

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Is it still a sin, Father?

The lovely Doreen from Waukesha comes from a good Catholic family, unlike the tree-worshipping heathens who raised me. Her mom is a devout Catholic and good influence on her children. (I'll let you decide whether or not I'm a good influence on one of her children.) Anyways, Doreen's mom still abstains from meat on Fridays during Lent and makes Doreen's dad abstain as well, even though they are both past the age when it is required.

But I've really been taking some time to learn something about carbon offsets and how former Vice President Al Gore, even though he personally uses enough energy to power every distillery in Tennessee, has a carbon neutral rating because of all the offsets he purchases.

Now I've seen it written that buying a carbon offset is like buying an Indulgence from the Catholic Church. And if it is, I've got that covered, too. But here's the real question.

If Doreen's mom is obeying the fast when she doesn't have to, can I use that as an offset for the occasional double-cheeseburger on Friday?

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No wonder Bugs Bunny didn't stop there

What is the nation's "fittest city"? Albuquerque.

The magazine's [Men's Fitness] nonscientific survey of 50 cities listed Seattle as No. 2 in the most-fit rankings, followed by Colorado Springs; Minneapolis; Tucson, Ariz.; Denver; San Francisco; Baltimore; Portland, Ore.; and Honolulu.

It's Top 10 fattest cities are Las Vegas, Nev., up from No. 2 last year; San Antonio, Texas; Miami; Mesa, Ariz.; Los Angeles; Houston; Dallas; El Paso, Texas; Detroit; and San Jose, Calif.

"This is not a scientific list; this is a commonsense list," said Neal Boulton, editor of Men's Fitness. He said he puts out the fittest and fattest lists each year for one reason — "to motivate folks to look at simple things in their lives they can do to be healthy."

So it's a higher, ideological truth, just not very scientific. I understand Al Gore plans on doing a documentary on Albuquerque.



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Brrrr.... it's hot.

I'm sorry I missed this. Former Vice President Al Gore was on Oprah talking about... yep, you guessed it. Global Warming.