It's not paranoia if they ARE out to get you

t has not escaped my notice that I am a minority viewpoint in today's society. This doesn't make me doubt myself or my views, as they are based on observation of the world as it is, not as I think it should be.

This it could be said is the difference between a conservative and other people, and indeed, this article makes that point:

Traditional conservatism, or what’s better called Toryism, is not about hiding from the scary outside world. It’s a worldview that, as A. J. P. Taylor described it, “rests on doubt in human nature; it distrusts improvement, clings to traditional institutions, prefers the past to the future.” Conservatism isn’t defined by gun-nuttery or rabid fundamentalism. It’s about prudence in the face of progressive utopianism and revolutionary fervor. When the conservative looks into the mirror, he sees a broken, fallible man capable of good, but never perfect, things. Liberals and government apparatchiks in the media don’t see him that way. Progressivism seeks to crush human nature and the idea that man isn’t meant for greatness. A progressive’s reflection never shows humility, only a hubristic belief in fixing all the world’s wrongs. For the left, right-wingers, including social conservatives, are ignorant troglodytes in need of forced enlightenment.

It continues to draw disturbing parallels between past purges of "undesirable" elements of society by various "progressive" regimes of the past and the thought-crime policing which is going on today, but you can read it there.

I'd like to say that I think the author is off his rocker/meds but I really can't. We're not at Reign of Terror level yet, but having unfashionable (but harmless) ideas can cost you your job, no small thing in today's economy. Of course this is a small price to pay for a better world, right?

The word utopia means literally "no place" since perfection cannot exist in human affairs. Make things better? Certainly better, but perfect? No. That is my troglodyteist conservativeness speaking of course, because after a certain point the quest for "equality" becomes a zero-sum game. More women in the workplace equals less men in it; not a misogynist rant, simple math. Should we hobble the potential of 50% of the population to maintain someone's advantage? I'd say no, take all the best and brightest. Well, then that disadvantages the dim and useless.

It's easy to see how equality of outcome is completely separate from equality of opportunity, as with true equality of opportunity the cream will rise to the top of whatever you're looking at. If you game the opportunity, making it "more equal" for some, it descends into farce with manifold unintended consequences. Quotas and "affirmative action" undermine any confidence in the products of a system, as you can never be sure of the quality of any member of the preferred groups. Were I a black neurosurgeon I would really resent this. Meritocracy is problematic for those who don't make the cut, but I bloody well want my doctors and engineers selected by that process.

Freedom of speech is if not dead at least gravely wounded, mainly because if you don't toe the line you'll be shouted down. Nobody debates any more as they are either too certain that they know everything or afraid to state their real views in public. None of this is new under the sun, and Voltaire would likely recognize the constraints of the current regime, having had his run-ins with l'ancien. That's progress for you.

Make a desert and call it peace

The IDF is hip-deep in Gaza again, and just like last time there is no real end in sight:

The bitter fighting in the Shejaiya neighbourhood in the eastern part of Gaza City, which has caused heavy civilian casualties and the deaths of some 13 Israeli soldiers, could mark a turning point in this crisis.

That, sadly, does not necessarily mean that the conflict has reached its peak.

The Israeli military still believes that it has more of its mission to complete.

Indeed, Hamas fighters may be emboldened by their ability to inflict pain on the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and they too may not want an immediate halt.

But the fact that the battle has moved into a heavily-populated urban area with reports in some cases of house-to-house fighting means that the civilian death toll will rise markedly.

With it will come added pressure from outside to end the operation once and for all.

The "pull back to the 1967 borders" two-state solution is the default position of the UN, but the current fighting is an example of what Israel has to look forward to if they do that. Gaza was vacated by Israel in 2005, and the reward for that has been constant terrorism from the "liberated" territory.

I 100% guarantee that if the Palestinians stopped trying to kill them and behaved like civilized neighbours (see Jordan for an example) public opinion in Israel would swing away from the ultra-Zionist settlers and find compromise on territorial issues. 1967 borders aren't going to happen (Syria ain't getting the Golan back and East Jerusalem probably isn't going anywhere) but trade would normalize and some permanent borders could be agreed on.

"[E]nd the operation once and for all" huh? There is only one way that would happen, and the current term for that is a choice between "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide". In any other age if a more powerful nation had a neighbour like Hamas, the entire population would be put to the sword to remove an existential threat. That's the only way to solve a problem like this, as Ender Wiggen could tell you.

As the linked article states, there are a lot of differences between this operation and the last one (Cast Lead) in 2009. Hamas' weaponry has upgraded across the board, from longer range rockets which can reach pretty much all of Israel to cutting-edge anti-armour weapons in the street fighting. The former is unacceptable, the latter a tactical problem which will increase Israeli casualties, and might under other circumstances have curtailed what is essentially a punitive raid.

What completely changes the game are the infiltration tunnels radiating out from Gaza. The purpose of these is as sally ports to run attack and kidnap groups out into Israel. The blatantly murderous intent these display is something no government could ignore (and expect to survive), and Netanyahu has a real challenge on his hands.

If relations with Egypt were actually good (although they aren't terrible at present) Israel could co-ordinate with them for a set of huge transient camps, and push the entire population out of Gaza long enough to search and destroy any jihadi/Hamas types who really want to fight (read: die) and more importantly, the entire arsenal and all of the tunnels. If you're not allowed to kill them all, you can certainly cripple their ability to hurt you, it's just a question of how much of the latter the IDF can accomplish this time around.

International, especially UN, pressure to cease operations is unlikely to sway the Israeli government (or people) as Israel has few friends there and those friends still have their back. Any slackening of pressure strengthens Hamas' position, so now we wait and see who blinks first. Whatever happens, it won't be "once and for all".

Red is Red and Blue is Blue, and Never the Twain Shall Meet

News of the day-or-so is the Malaysian Airlines plane being shot down over Ukraine, but I'll wait for that to settle out a bit before I comment on it. For now, something completely different, certainly off my beaten path here.

The general scenario is Sarah Palin getting a job on "The View" television show. I despise The View as a coven (no offence to actual witches) of shrieking harpies; although that is a personal opinion, it is relevant to the situation.

To say that Sarah would be a minority viewpoint on that program is to understate things significantly, but the "minority report" is important to the credibility of any undertaking. The writer for The Daily Beast to whose article I have linked doesn't see it that way however.

1. Co-hosts Rosie O’Donnell and Whoopi Goldberg would crush her.

The View isn’t Fox News, where hosts fawn over Palin like she is dropping pearls of wisdom instead of inane comments.

It’s not going to work out that way on The View, because in past years, Rosie and Whoopi would frequently slam the conservative co-host Elizabeth Hasselbeck’s right-wing politics. For example, there was the time Whoopi schooled Hasselbeck on the reason why women need to be the ultimate decision makers when it comes to their reproductive rights. The audience clearly sided with Whoopi, breaking out into thunderous applause as she finished her comment. Expect more of the same with Palin on the panel.

2. Palin’s daily dose of idiotic comments. Currently, we are stuck waiting for periodic appearances by Palin to make unintentionally hilarious remarks, like when she said Paul Revere “warned the British,” not the colonists. Or when she insisted that “We’ve got to stand with our North Korean allies.”

Listening to Sarah Palin talk about history is like watching an episode of the new Comedy Central show Drunk History. That show, based on a hit web series, features horribly inebriated people telling their versions of history. With Palin on The View, it will be like Drunk Historyfive days a week.

3. Sarah Palin’s views will be tempered or she’ll be fired. Here’s the most serious issue for Palin: She can’t play to both mainstream and probably not very political American housewives (The View audience) and the Tea Party wingnuts.

ABC’s parent company, Disney, is not going to let Palin be the Palin that most of us hate (or love.) Sure, Disney wants ratings because they equal profits. But I very much doubt that Disney will allow Palin—or any one person—to cause damage to its corporate image.

If her views are to be "tempered" (read: supressed, mocked, censored) why the hell would they bring her on? The answer is of course to use her as a punching bag for cheap points and laughs with the show's base just like Liz Hasselbeck before her, the token Christian conservative. The real mystery is why would Palin want to put herself in that position? Sarah is, bless her, not the sharpest knife in the block, but should have drawn to her some smart people as advisors by now. Her coming out with this idea calls that assumption into question, but whatever.

My point here is more on the ideological divide in public discourse shown very starkly by choice of language and personal vilification/mockery of those who don't conform. The linked article is relatively mild as these things go, but is still about as clever and subtle as a sledge hammer, 'though I'm certain the author would differ. Most likely he'd call me a bunch of names and tell me how ignorant I am while feeling smugly superior. I don't know this for a fact, but past experience with the broad "type" (determined by his treatment of his subject here) places a high level of confidence on that prediction.

Too much exposure to this sort of zealotry has soured me on online discussions, as it is impossible to keep things to the facts of a situation. Recently I called someone on a flippant remark completely at odds with reality, and the response was a constant barrage of assumptions about where I get my info from, words put in my mouth and complete dismissal of the possibility that I had any idea whatsoever what I was talking about. I consider myself sharper than Mrs. Palin. (she does have other redeeming qualities however) and the way I really displayed it there was that I walked away from a fight I could never win.

Here in my obscure corner of the internet I can say what I want, and I like it that way. I am happy to debate things with people who see things differently than I do, but the old concept of "agree to disagree" seems to be lost, so it's not worth it.  I know that I don’t know everything; it’d be nice for a whole lot of other people to realize the same thing but I’m not holding my breath.  Or ever watching “The View”, Sarah Palin or no Sarah Palin.

A new Thirty-Years War?

I stole this from Jerry Pournelle's mail bag at Chaos Manor. Put aside some time and read it, I found it enlightning, albeit it asks some more questions.

By: David P. Goldman
A one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is upon us. It won’t arrive by Naftali Bennett’s proposal <http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/181501#.U6dRlvmwJcQ> to annex the West Bank’s Area C, or through the efforts of BDS campaigners and Jewish Voice for Peace <http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/> to alter the Jewish state. But it will happen, sooner rather than later, as the states on Israel’s borders disintegrate and other regional players annex whatever they can. As that happens, Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria is becoming inevitable.
Last week’s rocket attacks from Gaza failed to inflict many casualties in Israel—but they administered a mortal wound to Palestinian self-governance. Hamas launched its deepest strikes ever into Israel after the IDF cracked down on its West Bank operations following the murder last month of three Israeli boys, arresting nearly 900 members of Hamas <https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/12643-israel-has-arrested-896-palestinians-since-12-june> and other terrorist groups. Humiliated in the territories, and unable to pay its 44,000 Gaza employees <http://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-decides-to-go-for-broke/> , Hamas acted from weakness, gambling that missile attacks would elicit a new Intifada on the West Bank. Although Fatah militias joined in the rocket attacks from Gaza, for now the Palestinian organizations are in their worst disarray in 20 years.
The settlers of Judea and Samaria have stood in the cross-hairs of Western diplomacy for two decades, during which the word “settler” has become a term of the highest international opprobrium. Yet the past decade of spiraling conflicts in the Middle East have revealed that what is settled in the region is far less significant than what is unsettled. Iran’s intervention into the Syrian civil conflict has drawn the Sunni powers into a war of attrition that already has displaced more than 10 million people, mostly Sunnis, and put many more at risk. The settled, traditional, tribal life of the Levant has been shattered. Never before in the history of the region have so many young men had so little hope, so few communal ties, and so many reasons to take up arms.
<http://cdn1.tabletmag.com/wp-content/files_mf/population1524.png>
Source: U.N. World Population Prospects <http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/panel_indicators.htm>
As a result, the central premise of Western diplomacy in the region has been pulled inside-out, namely that a resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue was the key to long-term stability in the Middle East. Now the whole of the surrounding region has become one big refugee crisis. Yet the seemingly spontaneous emergence of irregular armies like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) now rampaging through northern Mesopotamia should be no surprise. The misnamed Arab Spring of 2011 began with an incipient food crisis in Egypt <http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MB02Ak01.html> and a water crisis in Syria <http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC29Ak02.html> . Subsidies from the Gulf States keep Egypt on life support. In Syria and Iraq, though, displaced populations become foraging armies that loot available resources, particularly oil, and divert the proceeds into armaments that allow the irregulars to keep foraging. ISIS is selling $800 million a year of Syrian oil to Turkey, according to one estimate <http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/business/2014/06/turkey-syria-isis-selling-smuggled-oil.html> , as well as selling electricity from captured power plants back to the Assad government. On June 11 it seized the Bajii power plant oil refinery <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/12/world/middleeast/the-militants-moving-in-on-syria-and-iraq.html?hp&_r=1> in northern Iraq, the country’s largest.
The region has seen nothing like it since the Mongol invasion of the 13th century. Perpetual war has turned into a snowball that accumulates people and resources as it rolls downhill and strips the ground bare of sustenance. Those who are left shiver in tents in refugee camps, and their young men go off to the war. There is nothing new about this way of waging war; it was invented in the West during the Thirty Years War by the imperial general Albrecht von Wallenstein, and it caused the death of nearly half the population of Central Europe between 1618 and 1648.
As a result of this spiraling warfare, four Arab states—Libya, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq—have effectively ceased to exist. Lebanon, once a Christian majority country, became a Shia country during the past two decades under the increased domination of Hezbollah. Nearly 2 million Syrian Sunnis have taken refuge in Lebanon, as Israeli analyst Pinhas Inbari <http://jcpa.org/article/syrian-war-is-reshaping-the-region/> observes, and comprise almost half of Lebanon’s total population of 4 million, shifting the demographic balance to the Sunnis—while the mass Sunni exodus tilts the balance of power in Syria toward the Alawites and other religious minorities, who are largely allied with Iran. Jordan, meanwhile, has taken in a million Syrian Sunnis, making Palestinians a minority inside Jordan for the first time in a generation. A region that struggled to find sustenance for its people before 2011 has now been flooded with millions of refugees without resources or means of support. They are living for the most part on largesse from the Gulf States, and their young men are prospective cannon fodder.
The remaining states in the region—Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran—will alternately support and suppress the new irregular armies as their interests require. Where does ISIS get its support, apart from oil hijacking in Syria and bank robberies in Mosul <http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/06/12/isis-just-stole-425-million-and-became-the-worlds-richest-terrorist-group/> ? There are allegations that ISIS receives support from Turkey <http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/17/pipes-turkeys-support-for-isis/> , the Sunni Gulf States <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/14/america-s-allies-are-funding-isis.html> , and Iran <http://jcpa.org/article/isis-irans-instrument-regional-hegemony/> . Pinhas Inbari <http://jcpa.org/article/isis-irans-instrument-regional-hegemony/> claims that Shiite Iran is funding Sunni extremists “to be certain that a strong Iraqi state does not emerge again along its western border.” There are equally credible reports that each of these powers wants to stop ISIS. Saudi Arabia fears <http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/05/isis-saudi-arabia-qaeda-terrorism-syria.html> that Sunni extremists might overthrow the monarchy. Turkey fears that the depredations of ISIS on its border will trigger the formation of an independent Kurdish state, which it has opposed vehemently for decades. Iran views ISIS as a Sunni competitor for influence in the region.
To some extent, I believe, all these reports are true. The mess in the Middle East brings to mind the machinations around Swedish intervention in the Thirty Years War between 1627 and 1635, when France’s Cardinal Richelieu paid Sweden’s King Gustavus Adolphus to intervene on the Protestant side in order to weaken France’s Catholic rival Austria. At different times, Protestant Saxony and Catholic Bavaria allied with France, Austria, and each other, respectively. France and Sweden began as allies, briefly became enemies, and then were allies again. Looming over this snake-pit of religious, dynastic, and national rivalries was the figure of Albrecht von Wallenstein, the Austrian generalissimo who twice saved the Empire from defeat at the hands of the Protestants. Wallenstein, commanding a polyglot mercenary army with no national or religious loyalty, played both sides, and Austria had him murdered in 1634.
There is more than coincidence to the parallels between the Middle East today and 17th-century Europe. Iran’s intervention into Syria’s civil conflict inaugurated a new kind of war in the region, the sort that Richelieu practiced in the 1620s. Iran’s war objectives are not national or territorial in the usual sense; rather, the objective is the war itself, that is, the uprooting and destruction of potentially hostile populations. With a third of Syria’s population displaced and several million expelled, the Assad regime has sought to change Syria’s demographics to make the country more congenial to Shiite rule. That in turn elicits a new kind of existential desperation from the Saudis, who are fighting for not only the survival of their sclerotic and corrupt monarchy, but also for the continuation of Sunni life around them. Today Iraq’s Sunnis, including elements of Saddam Hussein’s mainly Sunni army and the 100,000 strong “Sons of Iraq” force hired by then-U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus during the 2007-2008 surge, are making common cause with ISIS. Tomorrow they might be shooting at each other. The expectation that the waves of sectarian and tribal violence that have caused national borders to crumble across the Middle East will die down in 30 years may be both incredibly grim and wildly optimistic.
***
In the background of the region’s disrupted demographics, a great demographic change overshadows the actions of all the contenders. That is decline of Muslim fertility, and the unexpected rise in Jewish fertility. The fall in Muslim birth rate is most extreme in Iran and Turkey, with different but related consequences. When Ayatollah Khomeini took power in 1979, the average Iranian woman had seven children; today the total fertility rate has fallen to just 1.6 children, the sharpest drop in demographic history. Iran still has a young population, but it has no children to succeed them. By mid-century Iran will have a higher proportion of elderly dependents than Europe, an impossible and unprecedented burden for a poor country. Iran’s sudden aging will be followed by Turkey, Algeria, and Tunisia.
<http://cdn1.tabletmag.com/wp-content/files_mf/popover65.png>
Source: U.N. World Population Prospects <http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/panel_indicators.htm>
Iran’s disappearing fertility is in a sense the Shah’s revenge. Iran is the most literate Muslim country, thanks in large part to an ambitious literacy campaign introduced by the Shah in the early 1970s. As I showed in my book How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam Is Dying, Too), literacy is the best predictor of fertility in the Muslim world: Muslim women who attend high school and university marry late or not at all and have fewer children. This has grave strategic implications, as Iran’s leaders unabashedly discuss.
Between 2005 and 2020, Iran’s population aged 15 to 24, that is, its pool of potential army recruits, will have fallen by nearly half. To put this in perspective, Pakistan’s military-age population will have risen by about half. In 2000, Iran had half the military-age men of its eastern Sunni neighbor; by 2020 it will have one-fourth as many. Iran’s bulge generation of youth born in the 1980s is likely to be its last, and its window for asserting Shiite power in the region will close within a decade.
The Obama Administration wants to contain Iranian aggression by accommodating Iran’s ambitions to become a regional power. As the president told <http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-02/obama-to-israel-time-is-running-out> Bloomberg’s Jeffrey Goldberg in March, “What I’ll say is that if you look at Iranian behavior, they are strategic, and they’re not impulsive. They have a worldview, and they see their interests, and they respond to costs and benefits. And that isn’t to say that they aren’t a theocracy that embraces all kinds of ideas that I find abhorrent, but they’re not North Korea. They are a large, powerful country that sees itself as an important player on the world stage, and I do not think has a suicide wish, and can respond to incentives.” Any deal with Iran is therefore a good deal from Obama’s point of view. But that is precisely wrong: Iran does not have a suicide wish, but it knows that it is dying, and has nothing to lose by rolling the dice today.

POTUSeless

Honestly I don't know where to turn right now, the world is spinning out in so many places. It is of course of no import to the grand scheme whether I'm tracking everything or not, but it is a big deal (it turns out) when the USA can't do it.

I am profoundly unimpressed with the current POTUS, but it is not a partisan or ideological attack I make when I say that he is worse-than useless in his current job. "Worse-than" for a number of reasons, but particularly since leadership of the (still) most powerful nation in the world is a zero-sum game, i.e. if he's occupying the top position nobody more capable can be.

The USA has a number of internal problems, being deeply indebted (mostly to their greatest strategic rival) being one of them, but their ability to project power is still unrivalled. Things would certainly be different on the foreign policy front were G.W. Bush still in charge, but since that can't happen (even if it were advisable and I don't suggest that) would things be any better around the world had Romney won the last Presidential election?

Let's start by enumerating the bigger strategic threats to the US and various other distractions, in descending order.

Threat #3: China's encroachment in the South China Sea and environs

In the big picture this is hugely destabilizing to world trade and the economic development of countries in the region. It is also something only the US Navy can be an effective counterweight to. There was a "pivot to Asia" bruited about recently, but again just saying something doesn't make it true. The Chinese aren't playing around here, and if you want to stop them you’d better be prepared to park a carrier task force over the Spratleys or Paracells, etc. in support of the most legitimate national claim under international law. And use it if push comes to shove.

I rank this one in last place for strategic threats, but it approaches zero if you decide to let the Chinese run the area. There are hundreds of millions of people on that region who would rather that didn't happen, for whatever that's worth.

Threat #2: The Islamic State, formerly Sunni Iraq and eastern Syria

ISIS/L has metastasized into a regional jihadist vortex, drawing in violent Muslim extremists from around the region and increasingly around the globe. They are firewalled in the north by the Kurds and nervously watched from all other points of the compass, the Shia government of rump Iraq and Iran doing the closest thing to heavy lifting right now.

The US didn't want to get involved in Syria, and I don't fault that since we are seeing with the looting of military stores in Mosul a Salafist organization with American military equipment, something widely predicted should the US arm the Syrian rebels. Turns out it happened anyway since the US backed the wrong horse (Maliki) in Iraq.

No however is the time to start whacking those jihadi moles. It's not a free-fire zone but the next best thing which is a great chance to kill a whole lot of assholes the world could really do without. This would be light on boots on the ground but could be used judiciously in support of limited goals, e.g. securing the Jordanian and Kurdish border areas. You support the outposts of civilization in the region but learn the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan and eschew the nation-building part of it. Killing them there prevents them from coming here.

Threat # 1: The Border

Central America is coming apart and people in desperation are sending their children north to the US in belief (well-founded if not technically accurate) that they won't be deported. Obama is trying hard to bury his head in the sand over this one, but with 350,000+ immigration cases backed up in US courts and upwards of 60K unaccompanied minors this year alone fetching up along the Rio Grande things are well out of hand.

Bleeding hearts who would abolish the border (another pesky "social construct" to be wiped out no doubt) have zero grasp of basic math, but let me put this in the starkest terms I can. There are TOO MANY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD. Specifically, there are too many people in the world with lower standards of living than we (working and middle class Westerners) have, about 5 Billion of them. They can't all come to the developed countries or those countries will cease to function as developed countries, and the whole world will look like Nigeria (failing state) or worse.  Think the L.A. from Elysium without the space habitat.

What to do? Start with enforcing the immigration laws already on the books. Then, dismantle the "War on Drugs" and send all those resources into Central America to clean out the root causes of the panic immigration. Bugger going after the drug distribution networks, just shoot-on-sight anyone on the streets with a gun. Go after the guns and kill with extreme prejudice any of the gang-bangers who want to fight it out. The US can put together intelligence cells to track insurgent groups better than anyone else, and I can make a case that stabilizing Central America (and ceasing to fuck with Mexico) would do more for the medium to long-term security of the US than the Middle East, possibly even China..

Distractions

1. Ukraine is setting into a counter-insurgency phase and at the moment (some rumours aside) the Russians have backed off. As I hypothesized a while back, Putin has taken the low-hanging fruit (Crimea) but realizes that the Donbas is more trouble than it's worth. This keeps things on NATO's radar, but it is now mostly a European problem.
2. Africa. There is a persistent Ebola (variant) outbreak in West Africa which deserves having an eye kept on it, and the continent is still awash in jihadi groups (AQIM, and Boko Haram the most visible) who need pruning.
3. Afghan elections/final drawdown/status of forces. Karzai's out, but the squabbling commences over alleged fraud and run-offs.

The big and the small all require leadership, the sort that believes in what they're doing. Since Obama only objective was to dismantle US power projection he's largely managed that, but it doesn't really get troops or the population rallying around the flag for some dirty work overseas, or even in your own back yard.  Romney is looking prescient for his attitude toward Russia, even if I disagree on the threat Russia really presents to us.  More of a mystery is domestic politics, but we know Romney knos how to run things so I really think he was the President the US needed, but instead they got the one they deserve.  Do better next time America, for you own sake as well as the world.

 

Plus le Climate Change, plus c'est la meme chose

I haven't been much into the Global Warming/Climate Change wars of late, but it's always on my radar.  I have some very real concerns about the climate changing, but they all involve things getting colder.  Even on the equator you can grow food, not so much in the polar and sub-polar zones.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s most accurate, up-to-date temperature data confirm the United States has been cooling for at least the past decade. The NOAA temperature data are driving a stake through the heart of alarmists claiming accelerating global warming.

Responding to widespread criticism that its temperature station readings were corrupted by poor siting issues and suspect adjustments, NOAA established a network of 114 pristinely sited temperature stations spread out fairly uniformly throughout the United States. Because the network, known as the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), is so uniformly and pristinely situated, the temperature data require no adjustments to provide an accurate nationwide temperature record. USCRN began compiling temperature data in January 2005. Now, nearly a decade later, NOAA has finally made the USCRN temperature readings available.

According to the USCRN temperature readings, U.S. temperatures are not rising at all – at least not since the network became operational 10 years ago. Instead, the United States has cooled by approximately 0.4 degrees Celsius, which is more than half of the claimed global warming of the twentieth century.

 Of course this isn't news to anyone who isn't blinded by Luddite anti-Western dogma, as it has most certainly not been getting warmer for most of us on the ground for quite a while.  I recall (subjective of course) a time in the mid to late '90s when I did feel it was getting warmer in the summer, particularly the intensity of the sun.  I have felt rather the opposite of that for most of the time since then, certainly this century, and this involves travel to other parts of the world.

This wasn't lost of the powers that be in the Warmist camp, hence the "Climate Change" re-branding.  I would argue that was the beginning of the end for them, as "climate change" is meaninglessly vague and attempts to equate literally any climate event with the increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.

The one thing everyone agrees with is that CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing, largely due to human activity.  From there things go off the rails and it gets pretty-much ideological.  Appeals to "science" are common from the Climate Change intelligentsia, but let's look at empirical (testable) effects of CO2.

First, it is half-assed (in scientific parlance) as a Greenhouse Gas (GHG), far outpaced by water vapour and methane.  Specifically, its' IR (heat) absorption window (wavelengths) is overlapped by that of water vapour.  What that means is as Freeman Dyson (a man much smarter than me and likely you) said, CO2 will have most if not all of its' GH effect in cold, dry areas.

"Aha!  That means the ice caps will melt and the sea level will rise!"  Except that that hasn't happened.