GM = Government Motors

Jonah Goldberg:

As one reader asks, "Does this mean the failure to obtain a lube/oil/filter every 5,000 miles should be criminalized?"

And:

From a reader: "... the oil change would take a week and the government cost would be around $1000.00"

GM CEO "resigns"

Where "resigns" means forced out by Obama.

At Instapundit:

JAMES LILEKS: Maybe I’m old-school, but “President fires CEO” looks as wrong as “Pope fires Missile.”

Jonah Goldberg: "What if GM were a newspaper?"

[via]

Earth Hour poll

Local poll:

The Goracle blows off Earth Hour

Al Gore's mansion at Earth Hour (from WUWT):
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Drew Johnson reported:

"I pulled up to Al’s house, located in the posh Belle Meade section of Nashville, at 8:48pm – right in the middle of Earth Hour. I found that the main spotlights that usually illuminate his 9,000 square foot mansion were dark, but several of the lights inside the house were on.

"... The kicker, though, were the dozen or so floodlights grandly highlighting several trees and illuminating the driveway entrance of Gore’s mansion.

"I [kid] you not, my friends, the savior of the environment couldn’t be bothered to turn off the gaudy lights that show off his goofy trees."

And note the three SUV's in the driveway.

Update: Algore responds and "Drew Johnson stands by his story".

A loathsome cartoon

Andy McCarthy at the corner:

...Barry Rubin has thoughts on a truly disgusting Pat Oliphant cartoon that will set the standard for jihadi propaganda for the foreseeable future.

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Earth Hour Checklist

More support for Human Achievement Hour

National Post editorial Earth Hour is a joke:

... It's not that we don't recognize some rudimentary concept of environmental appropriateness in lifestyle, conduct and thinking. But we prefer to put our faith in the inter-twined march of technology and the free market rather than feel-good slogans and rituals.

... in some places (like the U. K.), the peak level of greenhouse emissions per capita was passed almost 100 years ago. The inventors of fibreglass insulation alone created cumulative energy savings that defy calculation. Yet most of us don't even realize that our attics are full of the stuff.

... Electric light, now regarded as a banality, was in fact a breakthrough technology that expanded our great-grandparents' universes radically: It transformed the productivity of businesses and workers, enabled round-the-clock transportation, made the night less terrifying in both imaginative and practical respects, and -- let Canadians never forget it --allowed humans to settle the realm of short winter days without being required to basically hibernate.

To renounce that -- and all that it represents --even symbolically, is to renounce ourselves.

In other words - celebrate Human Achievement Hour - switch your lights on tomorrow night!

That airplane crash in Montana?

From this report:

... Some of you may have seen the major news story of the private plane that crashed into a Montana cemetery, killing 7 children and 7 adults.

... what the news sources fail to mention ...

... the Catholic Holy Cross Cemetery owned by Resurrection Cemetery Association in Butte - contains a memorial ... erected as a dedication to all babies who have died because of abortion.

... The family who died in the crash near the location of the abortion victim's memorial, is the family of Irving 'Bud' Feldkamp, owner of the largest for-profit abortion chain in the nation.

The plane went down on Sunday, killing two of Feldkamp's daughters, two sons-in-law and five grandchildren along with the pilot and four family friends.

Creepy? I’m betting there are many who think it’s more than just a coincidence.

[h/t Vinney]

Support HAH! Spurn EH!

Support Human Achievement Hour

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a leading free-market think tank, plans to recognize "Human Achievement Hour" between 8:30pm and 9:30pm on March 28, 2009. The new one-hour holiday coincides with Earth Hour.

Iain Murray: "let's celebrate all the good technology does and all the
wonderful things mankind has created."

Spurn Earth Hour

Michelle Minton:"... we are pointing out what Earth Hour truly is about: it isn’t pro-earth, it is anti-man and anti-innovation."

Alpha dogs

Who's making the big bucks in down times?

Alpha magazine's ranking of the top hedge fund managers' earnings:

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Next 12-25

Fire James Hansen

Leading radical climate activist James Hansen, in the UK to protest the use of coal, says: 'the democratic process isn't working'.... "we're running out of time."

And many WUWT readers are saying:

























Meanwhile, from our own home-grown wingnut:

"We need to act urgently.
We no longer have decades;
we have hours." [via]

"The first two months of the Age of the Hopeychange"

Mark Steyn:

... Any sentient being dumb enough to fall for this AIG huffin' an' a-puffin' from Barry, Barney, Doddy and the gang is a fool who deserves the vaporization of his assets that the national political class is lining up for him.

... The first two months of the Age of the Hopeychange have been an eye-opener. I expected it to be ideologically distasteful to me, but I didn't expect it to be so inept. Not because I had any expectations of President Obama's executive skills. But I assumed he'd have folks around him who could take care of details like governing, while he pranced around as the smiley-face hopeychange frontman. But the bench is still empty save for a handful of mediocrities.

Rex Murphy on the financial crisis

Rex isn’t impressed:

- John Stewart, swatting financial gnat Jim Cramer;
- hypocritical, loudmouth congressmen raging over AIG bonuses;
- Obama on Jay Leno’s comedy hour.

... Mr. Obama is acting curiously. He doesn't so much preside over the crisis as act like America's chosen master of ceremonies...

... Mr. Obama drops in to everyday events more than he actually manages them. He's very cool, as always, but he lacks affect.

... The American presidency as a four-year celebrity guest spot. "Say hello to the band, Mr. President." ..... Between the concocted rage of Congress over the bonuses and the faux outrage of Jon Stewart - the Obama administration's house comic - the greatest financial crisis in generations seems to summon very little but gesture and one-liners.

... Is Barack Obama leading the United States at this time? Or is he just a really cool guy with all the power in the world and not a whole lot of clues about how to use it?

Good questions.

Long gun registry

Scrap it:
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Obama's banana republic

Peter Robinson: Commandante Obama

John Hinderaker: Are We A Banana Republic?

[via, and]

The beginning of the end?

Terence Corcoran wonders whether we’re witnessing the beginning of the end of America:

Helicopter Ben Bernanke's Federal Reserve is dropping trillions of fresh paper dollars on the world economy, the President of the United States is cracking jokes on late-night comedy shows, his energy minister is threatening a trade war over carbon emissions, his treasury secretary is dithering over a banking reform program amid rising concerns over his competence and a monumentally dysfunctional U. S. Congress is launching another public jihad against corporations and bankers.

Peter Foster’s take on Obama’s Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, and his climate protectionism:

Like so many of President Obama’s other choices for his cabinet, Mr. Chu is turning out to be a disaster, both for his quasi-religious belief in global warming pseudo-science and for his Do-It-Yourself economics. Meanwhile he doesn’t seem to know much about energy beyond his own research cul-de-sac of solar, wind and biofuels.

And Mark Steyn on the implications of Congress taxing back those AIG bonuses:

I mean, it is a ludicrous, piffling, trivial matter with huge implications, which is to say that these Senators and Congressmen who are effectively demanding these bonuses be returned, and have passed what is, I regard, as an unconstitutional bill of attainder, they are making it less likely that we will ever recover a normal business environment, because they’re saying effectively that America is now a banana republic, that we’re a land where contract means nothing, even if the contract clause is one that Dodd and these other buffoons have specifically voted for just a couple of weeks ago.

It certainly seems like Obama and his people are driving America in the wrong direction. Let’s hope not because if so, so goes the rest of the world.

More Obama diplomatic miscues.

Now it's Brazil and Ireland.

And those DVD's given to PM Brown? They really don't work on Brit DVD players.

The Obama screw-ups are really piling up. And they make great fodder for the late night comedians. So you might expect to see it on Leno, Letterman, etc. Fat chance! Leno's still doing lame Dubya gags for God's sake!

A celebrity dies in an accident ...

and, predictably, there are calls for more nanny statism ....
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Bah! Mandatory for children maybe, but not adults.
Same for seatbelts and cycle helmets.

Goose killer!

[H/t Vinney]

Bailouts: What’s the exit strategy?

Senator Inhofe on the AIG outrage and bailouts:

... let’s be clear on where the outrage should be targeted – the 74 Senators, including now President Obama, who voted in favor of handing over an unprecedented amount of money and power to an unelected bureaucrat last October.

... I’ve said for a very long time, from the outset in fact, the federal government needs an exit strategy for its entanglement into the financial system.

As an aside on the AIG bonus controversy, it seems a little weird if not unseemly for the president of the one and only global super power to be personally focused on denouncing the executives of a single company over their compensation packages. Maybe he's hyper-sensitive to the situation given his role in bailing AIG out in the first place. But still ...

[via]

Kill the CBC

The National Post has recently run a number of opinion columns debating the state of the CBC. Conrad Black thinks it has a valuable role to play but isn’t fulfilling it. Today, Robert Cushman boosts the ‘CEEB’ and Lorne Gunter, in about half as many words, much more convincingly demolishes it.
Cushman, having been weaned under the influence of the BEEB, has a fondness for government subsidized broadcasting and, amazingly, doesn’t see the CBC’s ideological bias, referring to:

... the supposed "liberal bias" of the CBC.

Lorne Gunter, on the other hand, has no difficulty detecting the CBC’s pronounced leftward list and what to do about it:

The CBC will never be able to exorcize its left-wing missionary zeal -- for global warming, for Islam, for big government, Barack Obama, multiculturalism, public health care, human rights commissions and so on.
... If the left-right "balance" at the CBC were as close as 10-1, I would be surprised.
... the CBC Web site no better represents a diversity of opinion than the workers' central committee at Karl Marx Widget Factory #6.
... So the only thing to do with Mother Corp is to pull down its office buildings and stations and pour salt in their foundations.

Lorne Gunter is absolutely correct. It’s why I no longer tune into CBC TV or radio. My blood pressure is already too high.
I have only one point to add to Mr. Gunter’s. Governments should not be permitted to subsidize ANY enterprise that competes directly with private enterprise; or in other words, private enterprise should not be required to subsidize its competition.

Obama aides a "posse of smirky smart alecks ..."

The British Prime Minister’s reception during his visit to Washington has been a huge embarrassment to the Obama Administration. Aside from the cheesy gifts offered to PM Brown and his family:

... A new poll revealed that the president's personal approval ratings have slumped to levels below those of George W. Bush at the same stage of his first term.

... Camille Paglia, the feminist writer who was early and vocal Obama fan, said: "Heads should be rolling at the White House for the embarrassing series of flubs that have overshadowed President Obama's first seven weeks in office."

She denounced "the fiasco of the ham-handed White House reception for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown" and said that Mr Obama's aides were a "posse of smirky smart alecks and provincial rubes" who seemed like "dazed lost lambs in the brave new world of federal legislation and global statesmanship". Ms Paglia added on Salon.com that Mr Obama "has been ill-served by his advisers and staff."

Nile Gardiner, the foremost conservative expert on the special relationship in Washington, is gunning for the official at the state department who told The Sunday Telegraph last weekend that Britain deserved no special favours and was "just the same as the other 190 countries in the world".

Dr Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, said: "The official's highly insulting remarks were the most offensive comments directed against Britain by any U.S. representative in recent memory.

Ouch!

[via]

Stewart versus Cramer

Obama booster come "comedian" Jon Stewart has been feuding with stock-picker and Obama supporter, Jim Cramer. This week Stewart suckered Cramer into appearing on his show. Predictably, it was a setup for abuse and ridicule. From an article by Mark Hemingway:

.... If you want to have Cramer on your show and bully him for sticking his neck out and being spectacularly wrong in hindsight, fine. Perhaps he deserves it, and certainly it’s not hard to see Cramer as emblematic of Wall Street arrogance. The problem is that Stewart’s critique of Jim Cramer, or of the financial press in general, is not new or particularly relevant — banks have been collapsing for a year. It only became an issue when Stewart wanted to delegitimize Santelli and Cramer’s comments on the Obama administration.

Stewart wants to use bad stock picks to question the motives of financial observers who are now saying the Obama administration has botched its handling of the crisis. But, ironically, Stewart is the one now risking his own neck with a shaky prediction. Anyone want to bet on whether or not a year from now Stewart’s pro-Obama boosterism will look foolish?

... It’s been obvious for some time that Stewart is too busy grinding his partisan axe to properly hone his once considerable comedic sensibilities. He can’t even try to cut a gasbag such as Jim Cramer down to size without coming off as self-important and, worse, unfunny. Maybe before Jon Stewart starts accusing anyone else of hurting America, he should tell it to the man in the mirror.

Anyone who isn’t a fan of Jon Stewart’s will enjoy reading the whole thing.

Here's an earlier take on the feud:

Ontario’s green fascism

This is where global warming hysteria is leading. Jonah Goldberg recently clarified the meaning of liberal fascism. Now we have a good example of the new green fascism in Ontario Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty’s and his energy Czar, George Smitherman’s proposed new Green Energy Act. The Financial Post’s series (see also) spells out all the scary elements, including:

- a massive government power grab: "Already famous as a green nanny state, where every course at every school is to be larded with environmental propaganda, Ontario is now set to become a kind of green fascist state. The new energy act sets up carbon reduction and renewable energy — wind, solar, biomass — as quasi-religious goals that will be achieved via a massive power grab."

- undermining the economy and the environment: "Ontario’s Green Energy Act should more accurately be called Ontario’s Gangreen Act. ... No piece of legislation in memory will do more to simultaneously undermine Ontario’s economy and environment. This one act rolls back decades of environmental gains in the energy sphere and opens the door to a future of environmental outrages."

- government collusion with corporate rent seekers and green activists: "In summary, the Ontario government pays millions of dollars to environmental activists and corporate interests to lobby the Ontario government and agitate for the Green Energy Act, which act serves the interests of the agitators.... So a final question on Ontario’s new Green Energy Act: What’s the definition of corruption?"

- police state enforcement of green laws: "Is that a beer fridge in your basement?"

Mussolini could have taken lessons from the McGuinty Liberals.

As a former citizen of the once wealthy and sane Ontario I find this sad. As a Canadian I find it alarming. McGuinty and co.’s ‘Green Energy’ travesty will almost certainly drag Ontario, former economic engine of the country, deeper into its economic quagmire - and sets a dangerous example for other provinces.

British Columbia, having been the first to implement a carbon tax, join the Western Climate Initiative and shamelessly star-f**k green RINO Arnold Schwarzenegger, has already proven it has a taste for climate change Kool-Aid. So adopting McGuinty-like green fascist energy policy here isn’t far-fetched.

Disaster socialism

Never waste a good crisis. Should we hold our breath waiting for Naomi Klein to write a sequel called "The Rise of Disaster Socialism"?

Update: From the comments - Terence Corcoran wrote about this long ago.

[via]

YAP (yet another poll) on climate change

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Good call but why did they vote this way?

(A) Environmentalists and delusional alarmists - because the "world" isn’t doing enough.
(B) Deniers (Type I) - there’s nothing rational that can be done since the "world" has only a very limited understanding of what causes climate change.
(C) Deniers (Type II) - climate is always changing and can’t be "stopped" because the "world" isn’t capable of stopping it.

(D) Deniers (Type III) - global warming is a giant hoax and environmentalist / socialist plot.

Being an optimist I’ll bet that most are in categories B, C and D.

James Hansen - full-blown climate activist

Anybody with half a clue already new that NASA's James Hansen was more into politics than science. But his appearance at a protest rally yesterday (while freezing his ass off) proves he's "... complete[d] his transformation from scientist to political activist."

CNN's rigged polls

How about "... more revolting"?

Related. [via]

Neo-‘liberalism’- an outstanding critique

William D. Gairdner provides a superb critique of modern "liberalism" in his review of neo-liberal professor Alan Wolfe’s book The Future of Liberalism.

[via Mark Steyn]