Thursday, July 3, 2008
Quick! Everybody Panic Over Global Warming!
Here is the panic piece from the The Independent in the UK:
It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.
The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic and worrying examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer. [emphasis mine - CM]
So, according to this article, the North Pole will be ice-free for the first time in human history. Here's my question: how far back does human history go in this article? Do we start human history 10,000 years ago with the shift from hunter-gatherers to agrarians? Do we peg human history back 6,000 years with the growth of the first major states in Egypt, India, and the fertile crescent? How about starting human history with the year that President Taft became the 27th President of the U.S.? I mention the last because 1909 was also the year that Admiral Peary claimed to be the the first person to reach the North Pole. But I think that this article suggests "human history" began thirty years ago, with the advent of satellite coverage of the North Pole. I believe this because we have only had consistent information about the North Pole for the past thirty years, thanks to satellite data.
Here's another section from the article that supports this point:
The polar regions are experiencing the most dramatic increase in average temperatures due to global warming and scientists fear that as more sea ice is lost, the darker, open ocean will absorb more heat and raise local temperatures even further. Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University, who was one of the first civilian scientists to sail underneath the Arctic sea ice in a Royal Navy submarine, said that the conditions are ripe for an unprecedented melting of the ice at the North Pole.
"Last year we saw huge areas of the ocean open up, which has never been experienced before. People are expecting this to continue this year and it is likely to extend over the North Pole. It is quite likely that the North Pole will be exposed this summer... it's not happened before," Professor Wadhams said.
It's all global warming's fault! But here's the kicker -- since the hot year of 1998, the global temperature has pretty much flatlined. So where is the horrific warming that is causing this trouble? And why does Professor Wadhams think the North Pole has never melted before? After all, the Medieval Warm Period, Roman Climate Optimum, and the Holocene Climate Optimum were all warmer than now, so how can the good professor state with any certainty that the North Pole has never melted before when we have no consistent records from more than thirty years ago? The obvious answer is that the good professor cannot state this with any certainty, unless he does so in a firm and pompous voice.
Global warming fanatics say that the North Pole has never melted before. But I would like to see the empirical data that proves their claim. Without that proof, all we have is their hot air.
Posted by Captain Midnight
| 7/3/2008 8:30:00 AM
Comment
| Permanent link
| Tags
Friday, June 6, 2008
Quick! Everybody Panic Over Unemployment!
Have you heard the news? The U.S. unemployment rate increased 0.5% between April and May 2008, going from 5.0% to 5.5%. The immediate result of this report is a flurry of news stories bemoaning unemployment and reaching for their thesauruses to come up with good scare words: jumped, soared, leaps. Here's a snippet of an MSNBC story:
The nation's unemployment rate jumped to 5.5 percent in May -- the biggest monthly rise since 1986 -- as nervous employers cut 49,000 jobs.
The latest snapshot of business conditions showed a deeply troubled economy, with dwindling job opportunities in a time of continuing hardship in the housing, credit and financial sectors.
"Jumped" appeared in the title and first paragraph. "Soared" appears in the fourth paragraph, and "leaps" appears in the RSS feed title for this story. All of this reminds me of something Red Planet Cartoons published in April:
Stocks have taken a dive because of this hand-wringing report, but what does this news story identify as the cause of the "continuing hardship"? "Housing, credit, and financial troubles" all turn out to be the same thing.
Earlier in the decade, the government essentially forced lending companies to offer loans to people who were poor credit risks, or they'd be branded and punished as horrible racists and discriminating goons. Now -- surprise, surprise -- a number of people who were poor credit risks due to their unstable financial behavior are defaulting on these risky loans. Government stuck its foot in front of the housing, credit, and financial sector, and now government is reporting that this sector has taken a tumble. Well, duh! What do ya expect?
Certain politicians are always talking about government as though it could singlehandedly fix the economy. In truth, there are a few ways our government could have an immediate effect on our economy: namely, if it released the restrictions on ANWR oil drilling, oil refinery building, off-shore oil drilling, and nuclear power plant construction. Those four endeavors would open up thousands of jobs in construction and maintenance alone, not to mention the number of jobs created to support them. As an added bonus, we would be increasing our domestic energy supply at a time when there is an ever-increasing demand. Increasing the supply would mean a decrease in the cost of energy, and that would benefit our economy, and the world's economy as well. And the increase in supply would most likely lead to decreased prices at the gas pump.
Or you could try electing liberals to government whose only promise is for "change" -- what kind, exactly? -- and whose actions show they prefer to restrict our energy supply so you have to pay more at the pump. So how, exactly, are liberals for the little guy?
UPDATE (6/9/2008 10:25:27 PM): Jerry Bowyer at TownHall.com posted a reason for the spike in unemployment in May -- the minimum wage increase Congress passed last year:
Congress is to blame. Last year Congressional Democrats (along with some Stockholm-Syndromed Republicans) passed the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, which started a phased hike of the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25. Free market economists warned them that this would increase unemployment – that rapid increases in unemployment compensation hit teens and minorities the hardest. But the class-warriors are running the people’s house now, and they would hear none of that, so they took to the floor, let loose the dogs of demagoguery, and saddled America’s pizza parlors, municipal swimming pools, house painting businesses and lawn mowing services with a huge cost increase.
Now, we see the perfectly logical outcome of wage controls – rising unemployment among the most economically vulnerable. The chart above tells the story: Friday’s unemployment spike occurred overwhelmingly among teenagers, and secondarily among African Americans. Just like we said it would. A kid who is at entry level of job skills may be a good deal at 5 bucks an hour, but not at 7. Our anointed leaders gets to glory in their generosity (with other people’s money) and just so long as very few people in the media know that a demand curve slopes downward (a good bet, there), no one calls them on it.
Which makes yet another way the government has caused this problem.
Posted by Captain Midnight
| 6/6/2008 11:00:00 AM
Last date modified: 6/9/2008 10:25:27 PM
Comment
| Permanent link
| Tags
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
The Irrationality of Global Warming Supporters
OK, I've tried really hard not to write about global warming, but sometimes I just can't help myself. I asked my usual question about identifying the primary source of global warming to some 12- and 13-year-olds last week, and I got the standard answers of mankind, pollution, and CO2. Not one of them correctly identified the sun as the primary cause of global warming on Earth. After all, without the sun, the Earth would be a frozen ice ball drifting in space. To be fair, it's a trick question because I asked them about global warming, and they responded as if I had asked about human-caused global warming. The two are not the same.
Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is an edifice constructed of five floors. Here is how Warren Myers of Coyote Blog explained it:
There are a lot of reasons not to be worried about "inaction" on global warming. To justify the enormously expensive cuts in CO2 productions, on the order of 80% as supported by Obama and Clinton, one has to believe every element of a five-step logic chain:
- Mankind is increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere
- Increased atmospheric CO2 causes the world to warm (by some amount, large or small)
- The increases in CO2 from man will cause substantial warming, large enough to be detectable above natural climate variations
- The increases in world temperatures due to man's CO2 will have catastrophic impacts on civilization
- These catastrophic impacts and their costs are larger than the enormous costs, in terms of poverty and lost wealth, from reducing CO2 with current technologies.
Climate alarmists have adopted a rhetorical trick that no one in the media seems willing to call them on. They like to wage the debate over global warming policy on points one and two only, skipping over the rest. Why? Because the science behind numbers one and two are pretty strong. Yes, there are a few folks who will battle them on these points, but even very strong skeptics like myself accept points one and two as proved.
I have no problem accepting #1 and #2 as being proven, but I do not accept #3 as proven. I believe that enough science has been presented to show that the fluctuations in global temperatures have more to do with seasonal variations and solar cycles and less to do with any effects by man, and I've written about this before.
I found a ZNet article from 2004 that appears to follow along the lines Warren points out: start with an accepted point, then build on unproven guesses from there:
Before proposing answers to these questions, let us summarize the issues explained so far:
--- The world climate is getting warmer. [Depending on your definition of what is "normal temperature," I can accept that. -CM]
--- Climate models show that the burning of oil, gas and coal in the industrialized countries is responsible for the climate change. [Climate models are intellectual guesswork and can only reflect reality when they are heavily tweaked after the fact. -CM]
--- The expectations for the near future are very disturbing and many catastrophes are highly probable. [But these expectations are based on the guesswork of deeply flawed, and therefore useless, computer models. -CM]
--- Today's (in)action's will have long-term consequences for the entire biosphere and the living conditions of many future generations. [Yet more guesswork. -CM]
But the uncertainties about AGW do not prevent people from reacting as if they were the gospel truth. Consider the Bishop of Stafford.
A senior bishop in the Church of England has compared people who ignore climate change to Josef Fritzl, the Austrian who kept his daughter locked in a cellar for 24 years, repeatedly raping her and fathering seven of her children.
The Bishop of Stafford, the Right Rev. Gordon Mursell, made the comparison in a parish "pastoral" newsletter and said that people who fail to act to prevent global warming are "as guilty as" Fritzl and "destroying the future of our children," the Times of London reported Monday.
The bishop denied Monday that he was accusing those who ignore climate change of being child abusers, but said Fritzl was "the most extreme form" of a common selfish streak in humankind.
"In fact you could argue that, by our refusal to face the truth about climate change, we are as guilty as he is we are in effect locking our children and grandchildren into a world with no future and throwing away the key," he wrote in the letter entitled "following our dream," distributed around the Diocese of Lichfield.
He defended his comments, saying he did not wish "to shock people unnecessarily." But he said: "I am simply trying to use an analogy to get people to wake up to the consequences of what we are failing to do, because if we don't there won't be a future for our children either."
Nothing like a sermon of hellfire and global warming to scare obedience right into people. Recycle or you're destroying the future of our children! Bow down before Saint Gore, or the Earth will burn for your ecological sins!
And if a rousing sermon isn't sufficient to get you stirred up, how about finding out when you, the evil planet-killing human that you are, should die? This gem comes from ABC in Australia, and based on the answers you give, this Flash game tells you at what age you should die based on how fast you use up your "fair share" of the planet.
As you can see from the picture, my little piggy exploded and told me I should have died at age 2.2 since that's the age at which I "used up [my] share of the planet." What a nice way to spread the gospel news of Saint Gore! I know I always look to an exploding cartoon pig to tell people -- especially kids -- that they should just die, already. It just warms the cockles of my heart, and what's left of the exploded pig's heart, to spread that cheery news.
Too bad it's all a load of tripe. The vast majority of my piggy's CO2 was calculated based on the amount of money I make and spend, and since I don't choose to spend my money on global warming indulgences, the Flash game made my pig swell up to a horrible size. But here's the question -- how does my spending now suggest that I should have been offed in the name of Gaia at the age of two, when I wasn't spending a thing?
But none of that means anything to the irrational anthropogenic global warming supporters. The thing that bothers me most about this nonsense is how such people could easily use it to justify sweeping, radical changes in our society. It's a short journey between discussions of "when you should die" and justification of when you WILL die. Unconvinced? Government-enforced euthanasia in pursuit of a society filled only with "useful people" has a terrifying historical precedent. It's happened before, and it could happen again.
Posted by Captain Midnight
| 6/4/2008 7:00:00 PM
Comment
| Permanent link
| Tags
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Explaining Politics to a Child
The other day my niece asked me if I were planning on voting for Sen. Obama for President. I answered that I would not. She asked me why I didn't plan on voting for Obama, so I explained that I couldn't vote for him for two reasons. First, he doesn't have the experience as an executive that I believe is necessary for a President. I told her that I wouldn't choose someone to lead a large company who had no experience leading other companies first. Likewise, I couldn't support Obama for President when he has no executive experience and when he has yet to serve out his first term as a Senator. The position of President is too important to experiment on people whom we can only hope have the skills and temperament necessary to handle the job. Then I explained that Obama's political philosophy is the second reason why I couldn't vote for him.
Which brought me to the question I was faced with -- how to explain the difference between liberal and conservative political philosophies in a way that would make sense to an 11-year-old?
I explained to her that the two political philosophies differ fundamentally in how they view people. To liberals, Americans are children who need to be taken care of by the government; to conservatives, Americans are adults who are able to take care of themselves. And I prefer to be treated as an adult.
A day later a caller asked Glenn Beck what it means to be a conservative. Here was his response:
To be a conservative is, in my definition, is somebody that believes in the power of the individual, somebody that believes, please let me make my decisions, that I have a right to succeed and not be penalized for it. I have a right to fail and have no one run to me if I don't want them to run to me. A conservative believes I have a right to manage my family, I have a right to discipline my family in the way I see fit, as long as it is not criminal. A conservative believes I have the right to worship God, I have a right to worship the God of my understanding, and I do not have the right to jam my version of God down anybody else's throat or my version of no God down anybody's throat. A conservative believes live and let live. That's what a conservative believes. A conservative believes in the smallest amount of government, the smallest government you can get without anarchy. That's what a conservative believes.
While I agree with that, I think it gets a little wordy. I prefer the way Jim Quinn, another talk show host, defines liberals and conservatives:
For a conservative, freedom is the solution to the human condition, and government's job is to ensure the people's liberty. And every new life is a potential source of creativity and wealth. For a liberal, government is the solution of the human condition, and government should force everyone to behave as it sees fit. And every new life is a potential problem and burden to be taken care of.
And that's simple enough for an 11-year-old to understand.
Posted by Captain Midnight
| 5/27/2008 8:00:00 AM
Comment
| Permanent link
| Tags
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Food Costs on the Rise, Thanks to Global Climate Change
Ready for some happy-happy joy-joy news from the media? Food prices are on the rise, and it's thanks to global climate change. And as is typical with these stories, the poor are affected most. Here are three paragraphs from the article outlining the upswing in prices:
The U.S. is wrestling with the worst food inflation in 17 years, and analysts expect new data due on Wednesday to show it's getting worse. That's putting the squeeze on poor families and forcing bakeries, bagel shops and delis to explain price increases to their customers.
U.S. food prices rose 4 percent in 2007, compared with an average 2.5 percent annual rise for the last 15 years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And the agency says 2008 could be worse, with a rise of as much as 4.5 percent.
Higher prices for food and energy are again expected to play a leading role in pushing the government's consumer price index higher for March.
The increase in energy costs is easy to explain. With oil past $100 a barrel, gas and diesel prices also rise, and this translates into increasing food costs. But what's up with the food price increase?
Still, the higher U.S. prices seem eye-popping after years of low inflation. Eggs cost 25 percent more in February than they did a year ago, according to the USDA. Milk and other dairy products jumped 13 percent, chicken and other poultry nearly 7 percent.
USDA economist Ephraim Leibtag explained the jumps in a recent presentation to the Food Marketing Institute, starting with the factors everyone knows about: sharply higher commodity costs for wheat, corn, soybeans and milk, plus higher energy and transportation costs.
The other reasons are more complex. Rapid economic growth in China and India has increased demand for meat there, and exports of U.S. products, such as corn, have set records as the weak dollar has made them cheaper. That's lowered the supply of corn available for sale in the U.S., raising prices here. Ethanol production has also diverted corn from dinner tables and into fuel tanks.
Soybean prices have gone up as farmers switched more of their acreage to corn. Drought in Australia has even affected the price of bread, as it led to tighter global wheat supplies.
We have increased demand as the rising population and affluence of nations fuels their desire for better food. After eating too many mystery meat curries or stir-fried rat dishes, I'm not surprised that India and China are clamoring for American meat. But increased demand from overseas isn't sufficient to push up the prices by itself; we also have diminished grain supplies as arable land for food crops is being diverted to grow fodder for biofuels.
The New York Times recently printed an article about the increase in food costs because of the biofuels push:
The idea of turning farms into fuel plants seemed, for a time, like one of the answers to high global oil prices and supply worries. That strategy seemed to reach a high point last year when Congress mandated a fivefold increase in the use of biofuels.
But now a reaction is building against policies in the United States and Europe to promote ethanol and similar fuels, with political leaders from poor countries contending that these fuels are driving up food prices and starving poor people. Biofuels are fast becoming a new flash point in global diplomacy, putting pressure on Western politicians to reconsider their policies, even as they argue that biofuels are only one factor in the seemingly inexorable rise in food prices.
In some countries, the higher prices are leading to riots, political instability and growing worries about feeding the poorest people. Food riots contributed to the dismissal of Haiti's prime minister last week, and leaders in some other countries are nervously trying to calm anxious consumers.
Ethanol supporters maintain that any increase caused by biofuels is relatively small and that energy costs and soaring demand for meat in developing countries have had a greater impact. "There's no question that they are a factor, but they are really a smaller factor than other things that are driving up prices," said Ron Litterer, an Iowa farmer who is president of the National Corn Growers Association.
He said biofuels were an "easy culprit to blame" because their popularity had grown so rapidly in the last two or three years.
Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, called the recent criticism of ethanol by foreign officials "a big joke." He questioned why they were not also blaming a drought in Australia that reduced the wheat crop and the growing demand for meat in China and India.
"You make ethanol out of corn," he said. "I bet if I set a bushel of corn in front of any of those delegates, not one of them would eat it."
You can also make animal feed, tortillas, polenta, cornbread, and the chips for dipping into a nice fresh salsa I like to make in the summer, so ethanol isn't the only thing you make out of corn. As for the Senator's comment about the delegates refusing to eat a bushel of corn placed before them, the majority of corn grown in the U.S. is the field or dent variety, which is not meant to be eaten fresh, but is ground into cornmeal after it is dried. The Senator from Iowa should know that. His comment is both silly and insulting.
We have rising food prices because of increased demand on the existing supply of grains, and a large demand comes from the people clamoring that we turn our corn into ethanol to replace gas. If you have a bushel of corn, you can choose either to turn it into food--tortillas, cornbread, animal feed--or into ethanol. You can't use the same bushel twice. So increased demand for ethanol translates into less corn available for food consumption, which in turn means more expensive tortillas and corn-fed beef.
And now I get around to the title of my article. Fear of global climate change is prompting the calls for more biofuels, which is increasing the cost of food stocks like corn and anything else that uses corn, so global climate change is the cause of rising food prices.
When I hear the naysayers like former Vice President Al Gore moaning and wringing their hands over the over-hyped crisis of global climate change and how we need to change our lifestyle to save the planet, I didn't realize that part of their proposed change would adversely punish the poor by jacking up the cost of the very food they need to live.
Frankly, I'd rather eat corn than burn it in my car.
Posted by Captain Midnight
| 4/17/2008 10:30:00 AM
Comment
| Permanent link
| Tags
Friday, April 11, 2008
Bad Big Oil
Democrats in Congress engaged in an unwitting April Fools prank this April 1st. Some members of Congress summoned the leaders of the five largest oil companies in the U.S. for a nice modern-day inquisition:
Top executives of the five biggest U.S. oil companies were pressed Tuesday to explain the soaring fuel prices amid huge industry profits and why they weren't investing more to develop renewable energy source such as wind and solar.
The executives, peppered with questions from skeptical lawmakers, said they understood that high energy costs are hurting consumers, but deflected blame, arguing that their profits - $123 billion last year - were in line with other industries.
"On April Fool's Day, the biggest joke of all is being played on American families by Big Oil," Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said as his committee began hearing from the oil company executives.
With motorists paying a national average of $3.29 a gallon at the pump and global oil prices remaining above $100 a barrel, the executives were hard pressed by lawmakers to defend their profits.
The first thing I noticed in the article was that every Representative quoted in the article was a Democrat. But that's not all that surprising, since Democrats in Congress have little to no clue about how the economy works. Let's tackle the ideas in this article one by one:
"[O]il companies were pressed Tuesday to explain the soaring fuel prices amid huge industry profits"--And why should the oil companies have to explain fuel prices and their industry's profits to Congress? Oh, right. Members of Congress are being meddlesome busybodies for a grandstanding photo op. "Americans can tell we care about them because we were so mean to the oil businesses" may be applauded by liberals, who believe it is the government's job to manage a company's prices and profits. But government control of business is the definition of statism, as illustrated by the statist philosophies of fascism and communism.
"[W]hy they weren't investing more to develop renewable energy source such as wind and solar"--It is the responsibility of the business itself to determine how it will best invest for its future. Unless you are a fan of big government or a liberal (but I repeat myself) who believes that government should dictate how a business spends its own money, you already understand that. I would have loved to see one of the oil executives ask the Congressmen about why they weren't spending more of their own salaries on charities and other projects, but that would be just as wrong. After all, your money, whether you are a sanctimonious Democrat or a Big Oil chief, is your money. I have no moral justification allowing me to tell you how to spend your money, and you have no moral justification to tell me how to spend mine.
"[T]heir profits - $123 billion last year - were in line with other industries."--Oil companies make about 5% profit in bad years, and about 10% profit in the good ones. This puts them in the middle of business profits. Just to compare, the defense industry earned a 6.8% profit in 2007, the oil industry earned 8.4%, and the pharmaceutical industry earned 20.9% profit.
But this talk of rising gas prices and oil company profits ignores the fact that the oil companies don't set the price of gas. They don't even set the price of oil. Even OPEC cannot set the price of oil, although they do their best to affect the price. The price of oil is set by the commodities market, but not even arrogant Democrat Congressmen are dumb enough to try to call commodities traders on the carpet.
Here's the kicker: if the oil companies need to be called on the carpet for their huge profits, then what does about government's obscene profits from gas taxes? Red Planet has a great cartoon showing the comparison between Exxon's profit per gallon and the government's tax on that same gallon. Who is making obscene profits now?
If Exxon and the other oil companies are making obscene profits at 10 cents on the gallon, doesn't that make the government's profit from that same gallon of gas four times as obscene? Not if you are a liberal Democrat who doesn't comprehend the free market. To badly paraphrase Benjamin Franklin from 1776, a liberal Democrat has no problem with profit in the first person, such as "my profit." It's only in the third person -- "their profit" -- that they object.
Reread the article, and you will see this attitude evident in the attitudes of Democrat Representatives as they grill the oil executives. Heaven save us from these clueless, grandstanding liberals!
Posted by Captain Midnight
| 4/11/2008 7:00:00 PM
Comment
| Permanent link
| Tags
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Eco-Undies in a Bunch
Just recently an article listed on the Drudge Report caught my eye. Here are some excerpts from the article:
A major airline is under fire from environmentalists for flying an aircraft across the Atlantic with only five passengers on board.
The flight from Chicago to London meant that the plane, a Boeing 777, used 22,000 gallons of fuel.
It led to American Airlines being accused of reckless behaviour by green lobby groups.
The latest "eco-scandal" flight took place on February 9 after American was forced to cancel one of its four daily services from Chicago to London.
While it was able to find places for nearly all the passengers on the fully-booked flight, five still had to be accommodated. Those who did fly were upgraded to the business class cabin.
But while they enjoyed lavish hospitality, the airline was accused of an "obscene waste of fuel" by Friends of the Earth.
Ooo! It's an "eco-scandal," so be afraid! *cue ominous music* OK, so I'm not all that eco-impressed by their eco-moaning, and I believe there is only one proper response to them: "Shove off, ya wankers!" Anything more than that grants them more of a sense of dignity and moral authority than they deserve or have earned.
The article goes on to whine about the amount of CO2 that each passenger is now guilty of adding to the atmosphere, but even if the airline could have placed all five people onto other flights, that plane was still needed for a return flight from London. Would the eco-dorks have been happier if American Airlines had flown the plane over completely empty? I don't think so.
The article ends with this lovely vision into their eco-minds as the news really bunches up their collective unbleached hemp undies:
Richard Dyer, Friends of the Earth's transport campaigner said: "Flying virtually empty planes is an obscene waste of fuel. Through no fault of their own, each passenger's carbon footprint for this flight is about 45 times what it would have been if the plane had been full.
"Governments must stop granting the aviation industry the unfair privileges that allow this to happen by taxing aviation fuel and including emissions from aviation in international agreements to tackle climate change."
Governments "must"? No, governments have no reason why they "must" bow to eco-crackpot theories. I do not accept their eco-blather about carbon footprints and climate change. What I do accept is just how much these eco-whiners hate the idea of technology benefitting others. I'm convinced they would not have complained if they were among the five people enjoying a free upgrade to business class on a trans-oceanic flight.
Eco-goobers.
Posted by Captain Midnight
| 3/6/2008 8:30:00 AM
Comment
| Permanent link
| Tags
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Tomorrow Belongs to Me with Obama!
There is a building cult of personality surrounding Senator Obama. Currently making the rounds of the Internet is a slickly-produced plea for Obama to ride in and save us all. (hat tip American Digest)
Yes, all that they want will be theirs when Obama becomes President, merely because he will be President. Curiously, the "we are the ones" theme carried echoes of something I'd seen before. Maybe you have seen it, too. Yes, we can do it! We can succeed! We are the ones we've been waiting for! Tomorrow belongs to me!
Posted by Captain Midnight
| 3/5/2008 8:30:00 AM
Comment
| Permanent link
| Tags
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Angry Democrats
Any way I try to see it, there will be a bunch of angry and disappointed Democrats in the near future. On the one hand, there is Senator Clinton, and on the other hand there is Senator Obama. And since liberals view everything through the prism of group identity instead of individuals, that means the fight for the Democrat presidential nomination is between someone who is a woman, and someone who is black.
Of course there is far more to these candidates than their sex and race, but to liberals who have made sex and race identity so important, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have become visible embodiments of sex and race. And this can be a problem for liberals when group identities collide. Are liberals meant to vote for Clinton because she could be the first woman President, even though she is white; or should they vote for Obama to become the first black President, even though he is male?
You can see this conflict in the way liberal groups are handling the sex/race conflict of Clinton and Obama. When Oprah Winfrey announced that she was supporting Obama, she was labeled a traitor for choosing race over sex. But that's assuming Obama's race was more important to Oprah than Clinton's sex. Could she have chosen to support him for other reasons? That's not an option if you view everything through the lens of race or sex. Fortunately, not everyone will "vote their race" or "vote their gender," as some CNN readers have stated.
I'll say it again -- if you vote for Obama primarily because he is black, you are racist. If you vote for Clinton primarily because she is a woman, you are sexist. And if you vote for McCain because he's a white male, you're... unusual. (Conservatives tend to focus on issues over identity politics, so I don't see this as being as much of a concern for conservatives as it is for liberals, but let's cover all the bases for the sake of equity.)
The race between Clinton and Obama is close, but as I write this, Obama has slightly more delegates than Clinton and appears to have the momentum. But since Texas, Ohio, Vermont, and Rhode Island all have primaries today, the race isn't over for the two contenders.
Since there can only be one winner in this race (and no, I don't believe that either candidate would deign to become the other's VP), half of the Democrat voters in the primaries will be pissed off at the result. Those who view sex as being the most important will be disappointed and angry if yet another man is nominated. Those who view race as being the most important will be disappointed and angry if yet another white is nominated.
Regardless of who gets the nomination, I see a time of anger and resentment for Democrats when the primaries are over. I just don't see their anger preventing them from finally rallying behind the Democrat nominee when it comes to the national vote in November. On the other hand, I see many conservatives who are still angry about Senator McCain becoming the Republican nominee, and I don't believe they will rally in numbers to vote for the party's choice this year. And that means we will likely have a Democrat President come 2009.
Posted by Captain Midnight
| 3/4/2008 6:00:00 PM
Comment
| Permanent link
| Tags
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
A Democrat Quandary
Stephen Green of Vodkapundit is blogging about the Super Tuesday primary results while drinking at Pajamas Media and I surfed in from an Instapundit link. Here's the paragraph that Green wrote that caught my eye:
Superdelegate Christine Pelosi (daughter of Speaker Nancy) tells Sean Hannity that she's "torn between my gender and my generation." Either she's a perfect example of the identity politics that plague the Democrats, or there's not one difference between Clinton and Obama important enough to sway Pelosi with substance.
Since I haven't stated it before, let me do so now for any Democrat who reads my blog.
If you vote for Sen. Obama because he is black, you are racist.
If you vote for Sen. Clinton because she is a woman, you are sexist.
If you vote for either one because of their politics or stated principles, then apparently you are not Christine Pelosi. Frankly, I don't care about the race, sex, or even looks of any candidate. I care about the candidates' track records and their stated positions. Since I rarely get my news from the TV and mostly from reading it on the Internet, I am not influenced by the way a candidate looks or, for that matter, sounds. Instead, I've been paying much more attention to reading what they say and seeing what they have done.
And in my mind's eye, what the candidates say and do is waaaaay more important than their sex or race.
Posted by Captain Midnight
| 2/5/2008 5:41:38 PM
Comment
| Permanent link
| Tags
Captain Captains Comment Comments
