Blue Became Red and Red Became Blue

Jeopardy Category: 2000 Elections

"What political party voting symbolism was changed, first employed by USA Today and immediately adopted by all  Leftist Media, to distinguish between those who voted for the nominal conservative and those who voted for the Leftist?"

This was the equivalent of your bratty cousin -- suddenly realizing that the symbolism game wasn't going his way -- throwing the board in the air and demanding you all had to start over.

Getting a do-over has well served the aims of communist die-hards (Reds) who call themselves Greens, but we call them Watermelons.

That will be the subject of my next post: "Better Red Than Dead..."

Blowing Smoke

I received the following reply from Greg Craven, the author of the video that was the subject of yesterday's post, Traffic-Light Propagandist.

Yeah, that's why I posted a series of follow-up videos to address that argument. See the "Patching Holes" series of 3 vids, or the "How It All Ends" series of 70+ vids. Dig a little further.

Greg Craven

This appears to be nothing more than a form response that Mr. Craven saves for all of his critics. Is it a blanket comment "to address that argument;" a smoke screen behind which to evade the specific issues I raised about his presentation?

1. Which of my arguments did Mr. Craven address exactly?

Traffic-Light Propagandist

The traffic light tendency: they call themselves Green because they're too yellow to admit that they are really Reds. -- Lord Monckton

The presenter (Greg Craven) of the following video tries so earnestly to sell the Precautionary Principle to the fearful and gullible by employing a variation of Pascal's Wager. It appears he was too yellow to permit valid responses at the same site, as comments are turned off.

So Fine, Yet So Treacherous

Winter 69-70, Eastbound I94, somewhere East of Belleville. In those days it was two lanes each way until you get closer to Detroit. (Is it still? ["Yes" says Ed])

It started snowing before I left home. The interstate's road surface was clear due to the traffic.

I came up behind an 18 wheeler in the passing lane and forced to follow a bit slower than I liked. And then came the transition from 2 to 3 lanes.

There was snow on the new passing lane, but it looked to be less than an inch thick. So I started passing the truck.

Halfway past the truck my car starts to skid a bit (drifting really), in the rear and towards the right. Towards the truck. Oh-oh!

So I naturally try to steer in the direction of the skid. Unfortunately this is taking me closer to the truck. And I can feel the wobbliness in the rear -- this car had a very big engine with a high torque rear wheel drive (with posi-traction, THANK GOD!),  but virtually no weight in the rear. So it kept wanting to wiggle to the left as I jostled ever so gently my steering to the right and back again.

And I had no choice but to continue and try to pass. Pumping the brakes at that point almost certainly would not have been a good thing as locking up in the front wheels when trying to stabilize a skid seems a bit counter-productive.

I think I shall always retain a great deal of gratitude for that truck driver, because I'm certain he slowed his speed. Good thing too. He gave me the break I desperately needed.

For no sooner did I clear his front end than my steering to the right caused the car to straighten and then, under the slick conditions, to over-correct and really start skidding rear-left.

So I corrected again, and it started skidding right, but more violently.

One more correction, and she broke loose in the rear, and started ham-boning across 3 lanes of traffic. (All traffic behind me had apparently STOPPED -- Thanks to God AGAIN!)

I came to rest on the right shoulder guard rail with only a slight dent in the rear trunk lid as the consequence for my stupidity. (God must truly look out for small children and for at least one imbecile.)

I kept that dent in the trunk up to the day the car was retired.

I've not thought of that incident in years until this morning when I read of Ed's Thrill Ride, which seems to have occurred not far from the site of my incident.

Angel hair fine, newly fallen snow -- wet snow -- even though barely thick enough to cover the road surface, can build up in wheel-wells FAST. Be more cautious than I was in my youth.

Gross Sentimentality

Jeopardy Category: In A Green World

What is the charge against you when you seek an incubator for your premature baby, plead for medication for your grandma, or urge using corn to feed the poor instead of letting a smug pig burn it to heat his Tennessee mansions?

Lion Cheetah

Jeopardy Category: Wildlife

By what new name is a famous golfer now known?

Rules For Radicals

What would be a natural category on an episode of All-Tsar Jeopardy?

Or "All Czar Jeopardy" for those purists who'll insist on following the American media's choice of spelling for the Russian inspired word. I prefer Tsar because it looks like a misspelling of Star.

And thanks to Joan of Argghh! for the inspiration in comments.

The Pilot Program

What do "Progressives" call the methodical murder of 100 million people during the 20^th Century by Communist and Fascist governments?


**Update**
What do "Progressives" Incrementals call the methodical murder of 100 million people during the 20^th Century by Communist and Fascist governments?

Professional Courtesy

What do you call it when climate "scientist-advocates" are offered free servicing by Copenhagen's prostitutes?

Global-Warming Debate 'Will Determine Who Lives and Who Dies'

I spotted this story at JammieWearingFool.

JWF begins:

Debate? What debate? The science is settled, of course. We know global warming is a religion to these people, but now they're in the business of playing God and getting to decide who lives and who dies?

"People think that science is certain," he says with a hint of derision.

"We can't know what is going to happen. There will always be scientific uncertainty."

It is a moral matter, not a scientific one, Donald says, that requires us to take such drastic action now, even though the proof of actual damage remains hard to come by.

He is asked whether there is anything unethical revealed in the recent e-mails where fellow advocate-scientists discussed manipulating data and suppressing information that undermined their lucrative global-warming beliefs.

"On that I am agnostic," Donald says.

As far as he is concerned, he says with rising anger about the general indifference about climate change, the global-warming debate "will determine who lives and who dies."

The one thing that bothers me about this story the most is that "Donald" is the name that the original reporter, Charles Hurt, gave to protect his source: the "east coast university professor serving as panelist" at the Climate summit.

However, the line attributed to his highly esteemedness: the global-warming debate "will determine who lives and who dies" This sounds remarkably similar to Obama's "We are God's partners in matters of life and death," doesn't it?

As it fits within the entire spectrum of our globalist übermenschen who believe that the god of survivability must be served with -- what's the number?  -- six billion human beings being prevented from breathing, I think my readers want to know what I think of this story.

Pascal (the derivative) says: When told an übermensch says, or is only reported to have said, something worrisome, it's prudent to believe it and to prepare accordingly.

It's Rat Eat Rat at Carp & Hog-in [Updated]

For those too young to remember the teach-ins protesting the Vietnam War (I witnessed the very first), the same format was repeated by the same crowd to protest "ecological imperialism" a few years later (I attended that one too).

Thus, I tell you faithfully, the last part of bowdlerized Copenhagen -- Hog-in -- in this thread's title fits the Sinister Wingers who dragged the world to this pig fest. The carping part you already knew.

****Update****

(Is it really an update when you go back and add an element you had intended to spell out the first time? But your old-timers-disease slipped in back then, and you only remembered later you had forgotten to add it? Because God sees the need for us to feel our humility on a daily basis?)

Anyway, the rats of the third world were envisioning a feast for them at the expense of the civilized world (I think the PC prefer to call it "the developed nations," but you know what's really behind their double-think, right? Right.). As can be seen below, the taxation of civilization "for the 'developing nations' (wink)," is really a way for the übermenschen to steal from their middle class. So now they're apparently also going to make life difficult (per the "Danish text") for the uncivilized rats too -- Hence, "Rat Eat Rat" -- as can be seen at the end of the quote below (where this wrinkle was spelled out in my comment highlighted in blue).

**** End Update ****

From Papa Ray at BC:
Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after 'Danish text' leak

Highlights furnished by Buddy Larsen:

“…world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations.

The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.

The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as “the circle of commitment” – but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalised this week.

The agreement, leaked to the Guardian, is a departure from the Kyoto protocol’s principle that rich nations, which have emitted the bulk of the CO2, should take on firm and binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while poorer nations were not compelled to act. The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions [nice gig you have going here Mr. Strongman: would be a shame were anything to happen to it]."  -- bracketed interpretation added by PtD

Buddy's candid(e) impression:

Words fail. w*o*r*d*s f*a*i*l. Horrors! Red Fascism! Why, how on earth can such a thing BE?

Too Many Links Are Too Taxing On Moderators

I'm guessing that the following post was held up due to security issues that are necessary for operating any large site (and perhaps even smaller ones).

What I may do in future is that any comment like this one that has more than two links I will post to this site and then link this site's post at PJMedia.

As I have no idea when the post with its links intact might appear at BC, and as it joins several critical posts together in response to another contributor's comment,that is the reason for this post.

53. Pascal (the derivative):
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Jason, Postmodernism already has its “science.” It goes by the name of “Post-Normal” Science, which Wretchard headlined twice, here and here, along with his extensive additional commentary (unusual for him) placed in with the comments.

Essentially, Post-Normal science reveals only what its members believe need to be revealed, what the public is ready to hear. So it one may not find it unusual that its leading proponent, Mike Hulme of the U of East Anglia, and the publisher of the Post-Normal Times: Putting Science Into Context (apparently now in hiatus) was one of the first to offer excuses for what was revealed by the emails, in the WSJ December 2 — where he admitted that his emails were among the ones purloined.

Interesting times.

Dec 6, 2009 - 11:41 pm

Defend Your Right to Exist

Nothing is more to be esteemed than aptness in discerning the true from the false. Other qualities of mind are of limited use, but precision of thought is essential to every aspect and walk of life. To distinguish accuracy from error is difficult not only in the sciences but also in the everyday affairs men engage in and discuss. Men are everywhere confronted with alternative routes--some true and others false--and reason must choose between them. Who chooses well has a sound mind, who chooses ill a defective one. Capacity for discerning accuracy is the most important measure of minds. --Antoine Arnauld The Art of Thinking

At the behest of a friend, I took the liberty of updating Arnauld's quote above to reflect our modern and scientific understanding of knowing (in keeping with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle), and have replaced truth with accuracy.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him, the universe knows nothing of this.

All our dignity then, consists in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endeavor then, to think well; this is the principle of morality. -- Blaise Pascal Pensees 347 

Marie Claude brought the first quote to my attention at Belmont Club. I chose to use the second as it represents how these two allies influenced each other, and because the Philosophy Department at Oregon State University chose to use those quotes (out of many) to introduce these two philosopher/scientists, maybe for the same reason. Most of all, they serve well as a theme for this short discussion. Individual's have the RIGHT to fight gangs of men who act  no differently than all the unknowing brutal forces of the universe.


These two quotes illuminate the capacity of any man to understand what he may in a manner different from other creatures, be he genius or imbecile. What we are witnessing today is that too many of our geniuses are inclined to believe that all below them are imbeciles, and thereby somehow less noble than they.

Maybe -- maybe -- if we lived in a global meritocracy, there might be some grounds for the elite to run things. For then the most trusted executives with the most morally discerning lieutenants, the most competent professionals, the most just legal system, and the most charitable ombudsmen, they all would share the governing of the rest of us. Benign angels sowing peace and prosperity among men.



But what we have now is far worse. Tighten your seat belts, because right now you can meet a slew of people with whom you share sympathetic views most of the time -- and they may instantly fly off the handle were you to dare repeat the following observation. While in the Twentieth Century we survived at least two presidents who embodied the Peter Principle, in this Century we have been inflicted with presidencies that exemplify the Dilbert Principle. Made men are rightfully squeamish about their status, but the men who made them are angered that you dare pull back the curtain so that too many others might comprehend their scheming.

When the left and right sides of the aisles of government get along far better with each other than any of them do with most of their constituents, what would we expect?

^♫And the parting on the left
Is now the parting on the right^♫

We would expect that the last and current men at the top got there because moneyed interests had sound expectations that their wishes would be heeded.

^♫Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss^♫

I long ago discerned that  influential misanthropes must own the ear of many of our leaders simply because there no high profile party actively taking the contrary view (the "other side of the aisle") of the many proponents of negative population growth, while there was no lack of voices that found one thing or another wrong with religious faiths that consider innocent human life holy and deserving of protection and growth.


On top of it all, I believe I am not saying something new to you. Each of you has long ago suspected the same but were too trusting or too suppressed to bring it to voice. Heed your own senses! You have the gift of thought, and the natural instincts for self preservation. Stop acting like steers, and start acting like men again.  Know our wannabe masters want you enslaved and your drives perverted. Ignorance can be cured; you can cure it. No matter how much cowardice they have tried to inculcate in you, KNOW it is they who are that way by nature. Yes they may be ruthless, but they are cowards first. Make them fear you and you win.

The individual not only needs to resist the forces of conformity so that he may think more clearly for his own interests. He must encourage his neighbors to do the same. I know from experience, so I tell you that will be no easy task. Those who are looking to husband us like sheep need for us to look upon each other with more malice than we have for them.  S I N I S T E R  media exists for more than one reason! 

Love God with all your might, and love your neighbor as yourself.

That credo is the reason our secular world is working so hard to destroy Judeo-Christianity. (And so, beware the institutions of the faiths, because our masters have them controlled; for where they are not co-opted by the worship of man, then by they are often coerced into silence by means of the threat of taxation -- "the power to destroy.")

Learn to discriminate leaders from managers.  Beware of managers for whom you are are of no consequence other than objects for their own advancement; they believe they are superior to you.

You are men. Don't let the balderdash, thrown up by postmodern science, and spread by the relentless propaganda of the "sky is falling" media, convince you to deny the logic and gut senses God has given you.

You HAVE the ability to think on your own, to learn all that you need, to seek out and secure your own interests. To hell with this paternalistic, all powerful state and its statists and fascists and nutters.

It is in you.

Y O U  A R E  M A N!

Not Done Yet

I've a nice little expression of Pascal Fervor in the works, but I am not yet satisfied with it. I am looking to tie the past with the present.

I know that most of my readers are already convinced of my view on AGW. My aim is to encourage you to urge everyone to use their own God endowed intelligence before allowing Sinister media recognized experts to convince them that black is white and down is up.

Thank you for your patience.

Penetrate Their Thick Skulls

The effete snobs at the top of our celebrity culture know that Pascal employed ridicule to bring down their 17^th century predecessors, so they have pretty much foreseen and prepared for us to try and do the same to them now. The following is from my post at BC this morning.

Many BC commentators (Life Of The Mind’s analysis¹ is outstanding with extracts below the break) have indicated that Pascal’s device (”Elitists lose their power over the rest of the community once their pretensions are not taken seriously.” — Alexis) is greatly diminished in effect in our time. (Thank you Don Rickles and “Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts” for showing [the snobs] the way. </s> )


Our current crop of despots and charlatans have become calloused. They’ve trained to make it seem they are inured; that any verbal slings and arrows we lowlifes toss will appear to bounce off them. Their self-importance demands it — so naturally I came up with the silliest of posts to counter-balance them.


However, we should all keep on trying in the hopes that we simply have not stumbled upon the proper barbs that will penetrate their thick skulls.

¹LOTM's analysis, truncated but with emphasis added, follows:

UN = United Nimrods; I Pee Sea See Copenhagen

What more needs be said?
Junior high school humor seems so fitting to assess such sophomoric scheming dunderheads.

Poster Boy

Interesting to note. This photo comes from an article today in a Danish newspaper report that Al Gore canceled his talk in Copenhagen, originally scheduled for Dec 17. No doubt as the scandals heated up he got cold feet.

If you click on the photo it will open in a new window. Then you can hold the control key down and hit the plus sign on the number key pad to enlarge it. The sinister look in Al Gore's eyes becomes quite a bit more noticeable. >>shudder<< He almost became President in 2000.

Which Story is Sinister Media Pursuing?

Well, this really started out as a simple thought about a major human failing. It's one I've explored before, but it has come up again today involving two quite separate stories.

And then I rewrote my title and took a different track.

1. There's the battle to keep a lid on the overcooked data that -- I pray -- is lost as it would snatch defeat from the joys of victory for the climate schemers. 
2. And there's the battle by one public man to not reveal something that would be outrageously intrusive to ask of a private man. 

The news about Tiger Woods is really a personal story. The details of it should, and I hope will, remain private.

Yes, he has achieved status due his talent and hard work. But his large rewards are less due to the value of his work and more due to a cockeyed world that adores celebrity. That world, due to its raining awards for celebrity, thinks it is entitled to know all, to celebrate his falter as it were (whether or not it indeed is).

Tiger, if I were you, I'd say "I have enough of what you, crazy world, have offered. What more can I spend? If you don't back off, I will retire." Whatever happened, I hope the young man recovers all he may have lost. Forgive and be forgiven.

It's not as if Tiger, in his possible error, had been aiding and abetting those on the verge of enslaving the entire planet.

And which story is the Sinister Media Pursuing?

Ingenuity by Common Humans: Discounted by Our Demigods

Late today I encountered a frank new commenter at Belmont Club. It was on Wretchard's latest exploration of the AGW fraudulence.

Here is the comment "Bear" posted:

We should all be aware of who wants to pick the winners and losers.

Civilization as we know it is confronted with serious issues. It just so happens some think they can determine the outcome. These are not ignorant people, and carbon is a vehicle to the solution in their eyes. The problem is that they equate survival as a species with a socialist (we all know where that ends) state.
relentless growth is unsustainable.

Climate change propanganda is the vehicle to get there, since stating the obvious issues would generate even more populist resistance.

The myth that technology can solve everything is patently false.

this will end badly.

Bear, I’ve been battling with this concept a very long time. Few are willing to state it as you have.

There is redundancy in your assertion “The myth that technology can solve everything is patently false.” It sounds like you want to believe your line so much that you had to call technological solutions both a myth and patently false.

Dare you battle with me over it?

He responded:

Tragedy of the Climate "Scientists"

This morning in the UK Times Online published [emphasis added]

Climate Change Data Dumped

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

To qualify as science, a theory must come with all data intact Where data is excluded, it must come with an explanation. The object is for others to BE ABLE to test the theory; to let all comers try and prove it is wrong.

Hiding or discarding data is not science. Since such behavior will get a freshman flunked out of Lab 101, it appears some PhDs have traded their hard earned names as part of the requirements to obtain their latest grants; traded their good names for a bowl of beans as it were.

We know our politicians always hanker for reasons to tax us, so it appears these "scientists" are simply the paid tools of they who fund them. I have little doubt these are bright men who once sought a prominent position amongst noted scientists of the past.  All the more tragic that the 'leading climatologists" (in their own view at least) now appear to be the equivalent of the "learned" charlatans who worked for the despots of darker eras. Now, it seems, they are on the fast track of being forgotten along with the fraud who attempted to foist the "missing link" known as Piltdown Man on a credulous world a century before.

Steyn says it better than I

A couple of days ago, when I posted Facts Versus VIPs, I included a link to what I wrote more extensively at BC

The AGW fanatics constantly shout “peer review, peer reviewed.” What they are insisting is that it means nothing if the critics are not a member of the climate guild. That there is a catch-22 to gain entry to that guild, they don’t let on, but we all know it’s there. It’s like gang members challenging “where you from?” or a Chicago boss asking “who sent you?”

Mark Steyn. writing further about the disclosures of the CRU emails, concludes thusly:

But don't worry, it's all "peer-reviewed."

Here's what Phil Jones of the CRU and his colleague Michael Mann of Penn State mean by "peer review". When Climate Research published a paper dissenting from the Jones-Mann "consensus," Jones demanded that the journal "rid itself of this troublesome editor," and Mann advised that "we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers."

So much for Climate Research. When Geophysical Research Letters also showed signs of wandering off the "consensus" reservation, Dr. Tom Wigley ("one of the world's foremost experts on climate change") suggested they get the goods on its editor, Jim Saiers, and go to his bosses at the American Geophysical Union to "get him ousted." When another pair of troublesome dissenters emerge, Dr. Jones assured Dr. Mann, "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

Which, in essence, is what they did. The more frantically they talked up "peer review" as the only legitimate basis for criticism, the more assiduously they turned the process into what James Lewis calls the Chicago machine politics of international science. The headline in the Wall Street Journal Europe is unimproveable: "How To Forge A Consensus." Pressuring publishers, firing editors, blacklisting scientists: That's "peer review," climate-style. The more their echo chamber shriveled, the more Mann and Jones insisted that they and only they represent the "peer-reviewed" "consensus." And gullible types like Ed Begley Jr. and Andrew Revkin of the New York Times fell for it hook, line and tree-ring.

Dear readers, I'm sorry I don't have the flourish with words of a Mark Steyn, but I do have my extensive background in engineering to recognize a snow job when I see one. I know how the "peers" act when they know the facts favor them, and I also know how they act when they are trying desperately to sell something that does not work. They're hoping to be up and out of the company with all their gains long before the fit hits the shan.

I'll try to find the energy to continue offering my insights. Seeing Steyn use some of the same metaphors and imagery as I do, however clumsy I am have been at it, I find reassuring that my writing is improving.